A  Rollicking  Skit  on  the 
Margot  Asquith  Memoirs 


MARGE 


VSKINFORIT 


BY 


BARRY  PAIN 


DUFFIELD   &  COMPANY 


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JOJ 


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jo  Apn;s  a 


r\£  Q1 
UI  «4>1 


how  men  lov 
milkman  loveao 

"On  Sunday-^ 
company  him 

"  'Better 
like  rain.' 

"'But  you  Win  n  PI 

pointed  out.        r  11-|i-lCJ 

he  stt 

snare  one  un  of  setting 
the  drippings"  "f.  contest 
tion.  You  tastltutions  of  ; 


'N'o  '  I 

iui  and  though 
" 


aqj 


than 
1    Problems. 

nnt    ^    °f    the    conl 

laf  the  Wadl 


We 


such  a«,  »», 
If 


'»  the  first  ofll 
,«t   had   been 
e   closing   tei 

printed  In  tj 
I  simply  •- 

was  not 
.suited." 

Margot  Asr~c£mmlndasy  « 
bishop.      Shas  is  Wadlelg 
whereupon    g  which  ten£J' 
(her  for  her  <Jo    harmoniou 
ins   too.        md  economic  ^ 

'My   educra  of  reconsti 
•»JH  iBoj;oBadf '-"gular,  as  :y   concerned 
if  ;nq  sapjp  iBuof,Bonpa  ui  A  wheel    his    m,    all    the    m 


lou   '3UHsaja,ui  A[daap   aq  HIM 

aABq    HIM    snq;    ;sa,uoo    aqj,      -BUIO 
iqi  oj  uo^ippB  ui  aouoq  ojuiapBOB  UB  3uu 

^q  IITAV  9qs 

Sutaq    gf    oqM    ,uap 
e  o;  OS  pinoqs  PJBMB  aq;  aouBqo  AUB 
juaujaauauitnoo    JBaApjw    aq,    joj    ,93    a 
qoiqM  'q^uoui  sjq;  jo  X-ep  ;SBI  aq; 
aq  upvv  sajgpnf  9q;  jo  uojspap  aq;  , 
anaq    si    ;j      •sjtre;sa,uoo 
wqa  ;ssq  eq,  aA{S  lrHvi  qoIqAV  uia; 
MltAv  aou-epaoooB  ui   'papsaS  put?  padn 
-uiaq    ajB    ,uaut8pnf    pmy     Qq,    aoj    s 
sa   aqj,     -jauuBui   Aao,ounjjed   ou   u|    'j, 
Moq  -apBui  Supq  sj  uoumiuzrexa  aqx    - 
{SiiSua  aq,  pnij  ,qSnOq, 
>,  }q.§ia.vi  anp  aA{S  o,  aapjo  ui 
aaom    saambaa       UB 


However.    In  that  when  t 
flciency  to  .-s   in   progress, 


s  the  great  s 


were   called 
in  the  ft 


•MARGE  ASKINFORIT.' 
Duffield. 


By  BARRY  PAIN. 


Mr.  Pain's  method  of  satirizing  a  certain 
familiar  diary  is  to  lay  the  scene  in  a  much 
lower  stratum  of  society.  The  imaginary 
author  of  this  new  autobiography  is  a  parlor 
maid,  who  keeps  Margot  Asquith  before  her 
constantly  as  a  Great  Example.  Her  story 
is  amusing,  but  she  sticks  to  her  G.  E.  a  little 
too  closely;  one  feels  somehow  that  it  could 
have  been  done  better.  The  humor  is  usually 
an  exaggerated  form  of  under-statement. 
The  following  passage  is  a  very  fair 
example: 

I  was  by  far  the  most  spiritual  of  the 
family.  But  my  brother  Minoru  attended 
chapel  regularly,  until  they  stopped  collect- 
ing the  offertory  in  open  plates  and  substi- 
tuted locked  boxes  with  a  slot  in  them.  He 
found  another  chapel  that  seemed  more 
promising,  but  he  attended  it  only  once.  I 
shall  always  consider  that  the  policeman  was 
needlessly  rough  with  him,  for  Minoru  said 
distinctly  that  he  would  go  quietly. 


BY 

BARRY    PAIN 


NEW   YORK 

DUFFIELD  AND  COMPANY 
1921 


CONTENTS 

AUTHOR'S  NOTE                                 -  7 

I.  THE  CATASTROPHIC  FAMILY            -  9 

II.  EBULLIENT  YOUTH                         -  18 

III.  GLADSTONE — LLOYD      GEORGE — IN- 

MEMORISON — DR.    BENGER  HOR- 

LICK         -                                                   -  26 

IV.  THE   SOLES                                                          -  40 

V.  MISFIRES      -                                                   -  50 

VI.  TESTIMONIALS — ROYAL        APPRECIA- 

TION                                                            -  64 

VII.  SELF — ESTIMATE                                          -  78 
LATE   EXTRA            -    .                     -            -  83 


2071082 


**  And  every  week  you  opened  your  hoard 

Of  truthful  and  tasteful  tales — 
How  you  sat  on  the  knees  of  the  Laureate 

Lord, 
How   you    danced   with   the    Prince    of 

Wales — 
And  we  knew  that  the  Sunday  Times  had 

scored 
In  Literature  and  Sales." 

To  Margot  in  Heaven. 
BY  CLARENCE  G.  HENNESSY  (circa  1985). 


AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

This  book  was  suggested  by  the  reading  of 
some  extracts  from  the  autobiography  of  a 
brilliant  lady  who  had  much  to  tell  us  about 
a  number  of  interesting  people.  There  was  a 
quality  in  that  autobiography  which  seemed 
to  demand  parody,  and  no  doubt  the  auto- 
biographer  who  cannot  wait  for  posterity  and 
perspective  will  pardon  a  little  contemporary 
distortion. 

In  adding  my  humble  wreath  to  the  flat- 
teries— in  their  sincerest  form — which  she 
has  already  received,  I  should  like  to  point 
out  that  a  parody  of  an  autobiography  should 
not  be  a  caricature  of  the  people  biographed — 
some  of  whom  must  already  have  suffered 
enough.  I  have  lowered  the  social  key  of  the 
original  considerably,  not  only  to  bring  it 
within  the  compass  of  the  executant,  but  also 
to  make  a  distinction.  I  have  increased  the 
remoteness  from  real  life — which  was  some- 
times appreciable  in  the  original — to  such  an 
extent  that  it  should  be  impossible  to  suppose 
that  any  of  the  grotesques  of  the  parody  is 
intended  for  anybody  in  real  life.  Nobody 
in  the  parody  is  intended  to  be  a  representa- 
tion, or  even  a  misrepresentation,  of  any  real 
person  living  or  dead.  For  instance,  In- 

7 


8  AUTHOR'S  NOTE 

memorison  is  not  intended  to  be  a  caricature 
of  Tennyson,  but  the  passage  which  deals 
with  him  is  intended  to  parody  some  of  the 
stuff  that  has  been  written  about  Tennyson. 

No  doubt  the  author  of  the  original  has 
opened  to  the  public  several  doors  through 
which  it  is  not  thinkable  that  a  parodist  would 
care  to  follow  her.  Apart  from  that,  parody 
should  be  brief,  just  as  autobiography  should 
be  long— ars  brevis,  vita  longa. 

BARRY  PAIN. 
October  8,  1920. 


V 


The  quotations  are  from  the  articles  which 
appeared  in  "The  Sunday  Times"  It  does 
not  of  course  follow  that  these  passages  will 
appear  in  the  same  form,  or  will  appear  at 
all,  when  the  complete  autobiography  is 
published. 


MARGE    ASKINFORIT 


FIRST  EXTRACT 
THE  CATASTROPHIC  FAMILY 

I  WAS  christened  Margarine,  of  course,  but  in 
my  own  circle  I  have  always  been  known  as 
Marge.  The  name  is,  I  am  informed,  derived 
from  the  Latin  word  margo,  meaning  the 
limit.  I  have  always  tried  to  live  right  up  to 
it. 

We  were  a  very  numerous  family,  and  I 
can  find  space  for  biographical  details  of  only 
a  few  of  the  more  important.  I  must  keep 
room  f&r  myself. 

My  elder  sister,  Casein — Casey,  as  we 
always  called  her — was  supposed  to  be  the 
most  like  myself,  and  was  less  bucked  about 
it  than  one  would  have  expected.  I  never 
made  any  mistake  myself  as  to  which  was 
which.  I  had  not  her  beautiful  lustrous  eyes, 
but  neither  had  she  my  wonderful  cheek. 
She  had  not  my  intelligence.  Nor  had  she 
my  priceless  gift  for  uttering  an  unimportant 
personal  opinion  as  if  it  were  the  final  verdict 
of  posterity  with  the  black  cap  on.  We  were 
devoted  to  one  another,  and  many  a  time 
have  I  owed  my  position  as  temporary  parlour- 
9 


10  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

maid  in  an  unsuspicious  family  to  the  excel- 
lent character  that  she  had  written  for  me. 

She  married  Moses  Morgenstein,  a  natural- 
ized British  subject,  who  showed  his  love  for 
his  adopted  country  by  trading  as  Stanley 
Harcourt.  He  was  a  striking  figure  with  his 
coal-black  hair  and  nails,  his  drooping  eye- 
lashes and  under-lip,  and  the  downward  sweep 
of  his  ingratiating  nose.  The  war  found  him 
burning  with  enthusiasm,  and  I  give  here  one 
verse  of  a  fine  poem  which  he  wrote  and,  as 
I  will  remember,  recited  in  Mrs.  Mopworth's 
salon  : 

I  vos  in  Luntun  since  free  year, 
In  dis  lant  I  holt  so  tear, 

Inklant,  my  Inklant  ! 
Mit  her  overbowering  might 
If  she  gonquer  in  der  fight, 
M.  Morgenstein  vill  be  all  right — 
Nicht  ?— 

Inklant,  my  own  ! 

He  was  a  man  of  diverse  talents,  and  I 
used  to  regret  that  he  gave  to  the  tripe- 
dressing  what  was  meant  for  the  muses. 
Alas,  he  was,  though  indirectly,  one  of  the 
many  victims  of  the  Great  War.  His  scheme 
for  the  concealment  of  excess  profits  was 
elaborate  and  ingenious,  and  practised  with 
assiduity.  His  simple  mind  could  not  appre- 
hend that  elemental  honesty  was  in  process 
of  modification.  "  Vot  I  maig  for  myself, 
dat  I  keeb,  nicht  ?  "  he  often  said  to  me. 
And  then  the  blow  fell. 


THE    CATASTROPHIC    FAMILY     11 

However,  he  has  earned  the  utmost  re- 
mission to  which  good  conduct  could  entitle 
him,  and  we  are  hoping  that  he  will  be  out 
again  by  Christmas. 

My  next  sister,  Saccharine,  was  of  a  filmy 
and  prismatic  beauty  that  was  sufficient 
evidence  of  her  Cohltar  origin — our  mother, 
of  course,  was  a  Cohltar.  I  never  thought  her 
mind  the  equal  of  my  own.  Indeed,  at  the 
moment  of  going  to  press  I  have  not  yet  met 
the  mind  that  I  thought  the  equal  of  my  own. 
But  about  her  beauty  there  was  no  doubt. 
In  those  days — I  am  speaking  of  the  'nine- 
ties— it  was  quite  an  ordinary  event  for  my 
sister,  inadvertently,  to  hold  up  an  omnibus. 
The  horses  pulled  up  as  soon  as  they  saw  her, 
and  refused  to  move  until  they  had  drunk 
their  fill  of  her  astounding  beauty.  I  well 
remember  one  occasion  on  which  the  horses 
in  a  West  Kensington  omnibus  met  her  at 
Piccadilly  Circus  and  refused  to  leave  her 
until  she  reached  Highgate,  in  spite  of  the 
whip  of  the  driver,  the  blasphemy  of  the 
conductor,  the  more  formal  complaints  of  the 
passengers,  and  direct  police  intervention. 

She  was  a  sweet  girl  in  those  days,  and  I 
loved  her.  I  never  had  any  feelings  of 
jealousy.  How  can  one  who  is  definitely 
assured  of  superiority  to  everybody  be  jealous 
of  anybody  ? 

She  married  a  Russian,  Alexis  Chopitoff. 
He  was  a  perfect  artist  in  his  own  medium, 
which  happened  to  be  hair.  It  is  to  him  that 
I  owe  what  is  my  only  beauty,  and  I  am  assured 


12  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

that  it  defies  detection.  At  one  time  life's 
greatest  prizes  seemed  to  be  within  his  reach. 
During  the  war  his  skill  in  rendering  the 
chevelure  of  noted  pianists  fit  for  military  ser- 
vice attracted  official  attention,  and  if  he 
had  been  made  O.B.E.  it  would  have  come 
as  no  surprise  to  any  of  us.  Unhappily  his 
interest  in  the  political  affairs  of  his  own 
country  led  him  to  annex  at  Waterloo  a 
despatch-case  which,  pedantically  speaking, 
did  not  belong  to  him.  The  case  unfortu- 
nately happened  to  contain  a  diamond  tiara, 
and  this  led  to  misunderstandings.  Nothing 
qould  have  exceeded  the  courage  of  dear 
Saccharine  when  she  learned  that  at  the  end 
of  his  sentence  he  was  to  be  deported. 

"  It  will  leave  me,"  she  said,  with  perfect 
calm  and  in  words  that  have  since  become 
historical,  **  in  a  position  of  greater  freedom 
and  less  responsibility." 

But  I  knew  how  near  she  was  to  a  nervous 
breakdown.  Indeed,  nervous  breakdown  was 
her  successful  defence  when,  a  week  later,  she 
was  arrested  at  Whiteridge's  with  a  tin  of 
sardines,  two  cakes  of  super-cream  toilet- 
soap,  and  a  bound  copy  of  Keble's  "  Christian 
Year "  in  her  muff.  The  malice  and  ani- 
mosity that  Whiteridge's  showed  in  the  prose- 
cution are  but  partly  excused  by  the  fact  that 
dear  Saccharine  had  pinched  the  muff  first. 

Another  sister,  Chlorine,  in  later  years  be- 
came well  known  as  a  medium.  She  com- 
municated with  the  hereafter,  or  at  the  very 
least  professed  to  do  so,  by  telephonic  wire- 


THE    CATASTROPHIC    FAMILY     13 

less.  It  used  to  be  rather  weird  to  hear  her 
ring  up  "  Gehenna,  1  double  7,  6."  I  have 
not  the  least  doubt  that  she  would  have  con- 
vinced a  famous  physicist  who,  curiously 
enough,  is  weak  on  facts,  or  a  writer  of  detec- 
tive stories  who,  equally  curiously,  is  weak  on 
imagination.  I  am  sorry  to  say  that  she 
would  never  give  me  the  winner  of  the  next 
Derby,  nor  do  I  remember  that  she  ever  used 
this  special  and  exclusive  information  for  her 
own  benefit.  But,  like  other  mediums,  she 
could  always  give  a  plausible  reason  for 
avoiding  any  test  that  was  really  a  test ;  and 
now  that  she  has  doubled  her  fees  owing  to 
the  increased  cost  of  labour  and  materials, 
she  ought  to  do  very  well,  particularly  after 
the  friendly  boost  that  I  have  just  given  her. 

Then  there  was  Methyll — this  is  the  old 
Anglo-Saxon  form  of  Ethel.  She  was  a 
charming  child  and  made  a  profound  study 
of  natural  history.  I  remember  her  saying 
to  me  at  a  reception  where  the  refreshments 
had  been  somewhat  restricted  :  "  One  cock- 
tail doesn't  make  a  swallow."  Modern  biology 
has,  I  believe,  confirmed  this  observation. 
She  spent  much  of  her  time  at  the  Zoo,  and  it 
was  thought  that  it  would  be  an  advantage 
if  she  could  be  permanently  resident  there. 
But  although  she  was  not  unlike  a  flamingo 
in  the  face,  and  I  had  some  interest  with  the 
man  who  supplies  the  fish  for  the  sea-lions, 
no  vacant  cage  could  be  found.  An  offer  to 
let  her  share  one  with  the  cassowary — 
missionara  timbuctana — was  refused. 


14  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

I  must  now  speak  of  another  sister,  Caramel, 
though  I  do  so  with  grief.  However,  there 
is  a  skeleton  in  every  fold — I  mean  to  say,  a 
black  sheep  in  every  cupboard.  She  was 
undeniably  beautiful,  and  had  a  romantic 
postcard  face.  Her  figure  was  perfect.  Her 
intelligence  was  C  3.  In  a  week  moment  she 
accepted  a  thinking  part  in  a  revue  at  the 
"  Frivolity,"  and  her  career  ended,  as  might 
have  been  expected,  in  a  shocking  mis- 
alliance. She  married  the  Marquis  of  Bean- 
strite,  and  has  more  than  once  appeared  on 
the  back  page  of  the  "  Daily  Mail,"  but  that 
is  not  everything.  She  never  sees  anything 
of  me  now,  and  it  brings  the  tears  to  my  eyes 
when  I  think  what  she  is  missing. 

My  brothers  were  all  of  them  sportsmen,  but 
they  were  seldom  at  home.  They  seemed  to 
feel  that  they  were  wanted  elsewhere,  and 
they  generally  were.  You  ask  any  policeman 
in  the  Kentish  Town  district,  mentioning  my 
name,  and  he  will  tell  you. 

There  were  seventy-three  of  us  all  together, 
of  whom  eighty-four  survive,  including  my- 
self. And  yet  dear  papa  sometimes  seems  a 
little  irritable — I  wonder  why. 

My  mamma  was  quite  different  from  my 
papa.  They  were  not  even  of  the  same  sex. 
But  that  so  often  happens,  don't  you  think  ? 

My  father  had  a  curious  fancy  for  naming 
all  his  sons  after  subsequent  winners  of  the 
Derby.  No  doubt  it  will  be  said  that  this  is 
not  always  practical ;  nor  is  it — the  Derby  is 
occasionally  won  by  a  gee-gee  of  the  sex 


THE    CATASTROPHIC    FAMILY     15 

which  I  have  myself  adopted,  and  in  those 
cases  the  name  is  unsuitable  for  a  boy.  But 
if  it  could  be  generally  done,  it  would  abso- 
lutely preclude  any  betting  on  one  of  our 
classic  races  ;  it  would  probably  also  preclude 
the  race.  After  all,  we  do  have  to  be  moral 
in  the  intervals,  and  reclaim  factory-girls  in 
the  dinner-hour.  But  I  fear  it  will  never 
happen — so  few  men  have  dear  papa's  wonder- 
ful foresight. 

Spearmint,  my  eldest  surviving  brother, 
came  much  under  the  influence  of  Alexis 
Chopitoff,  and  entered  the  same  profession. 
Simple  and  unassuming,  no  one  would  have 
supposed  that  in  one  year  he  had  backed  the 
winner  in  all  the  principal  races.  But  such 
was  veritably  the  case. 

"  There's  nothing  in  it,  Marge,"  he  said  to 
me  one  evening.  "  There's  only  one  sure 
way  to  win — back  every  horse  in  the  race 
with  another  man's  money.  I  tell  a  customer 
the  tale  that  I  was  shaving  a  well-known 
trainer  that  morning,  and  that  the  trainer 
had  given  me  a  certainty  ;  all  I  ask  is  that 
the  customer  will  put  half-a-crown  on  for  me. 
I  repeat  the  process,  changing  the  name  of 
the  certainty,  until  I  have  got  all  risks 
covered.  I  know  it's  old  fashioned,  but  I 
like  it.  It  demands  nothing  but  patience, 
and  it  cannot  possibly  go  wrong." 

But  it  did  go  wrong.  He  was  telling  the 
tale  of  how  the  well-known  trainer  had  given 
him  the  certainty  to  a  new  customer,  whom 
Spearmint  had  never  shaved  before.  By  a 


16  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

disastrous  coincidence  it  happened  that  the 
new  customer  actually  was  that  well-known 
trainer.  He  seemed  to  think  that  Spearmint 
had  taken  a  liberty  with  his  name,  and  even 
to  resent  it. 

Spearmint  did  not  lose  the  sight  of  the  left 
eye,  as  was  at  one  time  feared,  but  his  looks 
have  never  been  quite  the  same  since  his  nose 
was  broken. 

My  next  brother,  Orby,  was  born  in  1870. 
He  could  do  the  most  graceful  and  charming 
things.  When  his  namesake  won  the  Derby 
in  1907,  he  immediately  acquired  a  compli- 
mentary Irish  accent,  and  employed  it  in  the 
narration  of  humorous  stories.  An  accent 
acquired  at  the  age  of  thirty-seven  is  perhaps 
liable  to  lack  conviction,  and  I  always  thought 
that  my  brother  was  over-scrupulous  in 
beginning  every  sentence  with  the  word 
"  Bedad."  Like  myself,  he  simply  did  not 
know  what  fear  was,  and  in  consequence  told 
his  Irish  stories  in  his  own  Irish  accent  to  a 
real  Irishman.  However,  now  that  he  has 
got  his  new  teeth  in  you  would  never  know 
that  he  had  been  hit.  It  was  said  of  him  by 
a  great  legal  authority — I  forget  in  which 
police-court — that  he  had  the  best  manners 
and  the  least  honesty  of  any  taxi-driver  on 
the  Knightsbridge  rank. 

Another  brother,  Sunstar,  acquired  con- 
siderable reputation  by  his  skill  in  legerde- 
main. If  you  lent  him  a  watch  or  a  coin, 
with  one  turn  of  his  hand  he  would  make  it 
disappear ;  he  could  do  the  same  thing  when 


THE    CATASTROPHIC    FAMILY     17 

you  had  not  lent  it.  He  could  make  any- 
thing disappear  that  was  not  absolutely 
screwed  to  the  floor,  and  at  public-houses 
where  he  was  known  the  pewter  from  which 
he  drank  was  always  chained  to  the  bar.  He 
had  something  of  my  own  quixotic  nature, 
and  would  probably  have  taken  the  rest  if 
he  had  wanted  it.  One  day  at  Ascot  he  made 
a  stranger's  watch  disappear.  When  he  came 
to  examine  his  newly-acquired  property  he 
was  disappointed  to  find  that  the  watch  was 
a  four-and-sixpenny  American  Everbright — 
"  Puts  you  wrong,  Day  and  night."  He  was 
on  the  point  of  throwing  it  away  when  the 
kindly  thought  came  to  him  that  perhaps  the 
stranger  attached  some  sentimental  value  to 
that  watch ;  indeed,  there  seemed  to  be  no 
other  possible  reason  for  wearing  it.  Sunstar 
determined  to  replace  the  watch  in  the  stran- 
ger's pocket.  He  did  his  best,  but  he  was 
far  more  practised  in  removing  than  hi  re- 
placing. The  stranger — a  hulking,  cowardly 
brute — caught  my  brother  with  his  hand  in 
his  pocket,  and  failed  to  grasp  the  altruism  of 
his  motives,  and  that  is  why  poor  Sunnie 
walks  a  little  lame. 

He  is  not  with  us  at  present.  He  had 
made  quite  a  number  of  things  disappear,  and 
a  censorious  world  is  ever  prone  to  judge  by 
disappearances.  It  became  expedient — and 
even  necessary — for  my  brother  to  make 
himself  disappear,  and  he  did  so. 

The  Second  Extract,  as  they  say  on  the 
film,  will  follow  immediately. 


SECOND  EXTRACT 
EBULLIENT  YOUTH 

I  HAVE  been  studying  the  beautiful  pages  of 
the  autobiography  of  my  Great  Example — 
hereinafter  to  be  called  the  G.E.  It  is  wonder- 
ful to  be  admitted  to  the  circle  of  the  elect, 
week  after  week,  at  the  low  rate  of  twopence 
a  time.  Why,  I've  paid  more  to  see  the  pic- 
tures. 

Considering  the  price,  one  ought  not  to 
carp.  The  G.E.  says  in  one  extract  that  she 
has  lost  every  female  friend  she  ever  had,  with 
the  exception  of  four.  In  a  subsequent  ex- 
tract she  names  six  women  whose  friendship 
has  remained  loving  and  true  to  her  since 
girlhood.  She  speaks  of  a  four-line  stanza  as 
a  couplet.  She  imputes  a  "  blasphemous 
tirade  "  to  a  great  man  of  science  who  cer- 
tainly never  uttered  one.  She  says  that  she 
had  a  conversation  with  Lord  Salisbury  about 
the  fiscal  controversy,  in  which  he  took  no 
part,  the  year  after  his  death.  But  why  make 
a  fuss  about  little  things  like  this  ?  If  you  write 
in  bed  at  the  rate  of  one  thousand  words  an 
hour,  accidents  are  sure  to  happen. 

But  there  is  just  one  of  the  G.E.'s  sentences 
that  is  worrying  me  and  keeping  me  awake  at 
night.  Here  it  is — read  it  carefully  : 

"  I    wore    the    shortest    of   tweed    skirts, 

18 


EBULLIENT    YOUTH  19 

knickerbockers  of  the  same  stuff,  top-boots,  a 
cover-coat,  and  a  coloured  scarf  round  my 
head." 

And  all  very  nice  too,  no  doubt.  But  con- 
sider the  terrific  problem  involved. 

She  does  not  say  that  the  skirt  and  knicker- 
bockers were  made  of  the  same  kind  of  stuff. 
If  she  had,  I  could  have  understood  it,  and 
my  natural  delicacy  would  for  ever  have 
kept  me  from  the  slightest  allusion  to  the 
subject. 

What  she  does  say  is  that  the  skirt  and 
knickerbockers  were  made  of  the  same  stuff. 
That  is  very  different,  and  involves  hideous 
complications. 

Firstly,  it  must  mean  that  the  knicker- 
bockers were  made  out  of  the  skirt.  Well, 
there  may  have  been  surplus  material  from 
that  coloured  scarf,  and  it  is  not  for  me  to 
say.  But,  secondly,  it  must  also  mean  that 
the  skirt  was  made  out  of  the  knickerbockers. 
Oh,  help  ! 

No,  I  positively  refuse.  I  will  not  say 
another  word.  There  are  limits.  Only  an 
abstruse  theologian  with  a  taste  for  the 
more  recondite  niceties  of  obscure  heresies 
could  possibly  do  justice  to  it. 

All  change,  please.  The  next  item  on  the 
programme  will  be  a  succinct  account  of  my 
ebullient  girlhood. 

I  cannot  say  that  I  loved  the  Warren,  my 
ancestral  home.  The  neighbours  called  it  the 
Warren,  but  I  can't  think  why.  The  Post 
Office  said  it  was  No.  4,  Catley  Mews,  Kentish 


20  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

Town,  and  dear  papa — who  always  had  the 
mot  juste — sometimes  said  that  it  was  hell. 

We  were  a  high-spirited  family  with  clean- 
cut  personalities,  penetrating  voices,  short 
tempers,  high  nervous  tension,  and  small 
feet.  Don't  you  wish  you  were  like  that  ? 

All  the  same,  there  were  only  the  four  rooms 
over  the  stable.  At  times  there  were  fifteen 
or  sixteen  of  us  at  home,  and  also  the  lodger — 
I  shall  speak  of  him  presently.  And  when  you 
have  five  personal  quarrels,  baby,  the  family 
wash,  a  sewing-machine,  three  mouth-organs, 
fried  bacon,  and  a  serious  political  argument 
occurring  simultaneously  in  a  restricted  estab- 
lishment, something  has  to  go.  As  a  rule, 
dear  papa  went.  He  would  make  for  Regent's 
Park,  and  find  repose  in  the  old-world  calm 
of  the  parrot-house  at  the  Zoo. 

But  there  is  always  room  on  the  top — it  is 
a  conviction  on  which  I  have  ever  acted. 
When  I  felt  too  cramped  and  stifled  in  the 
atmosphere  of  the  Warren,  I  would  climb  out 
on  the  roof.  There,  with  nothing  on  but  my 
nightgown,  tennis  shoes,  and  the  moonlight, 
I  would  dance  frenetically.  The  tiles  would 
break  loose  beneath  my  gossamer  tread  and, 
accompanied  by  sections  of  gutter,  go  pop- 
pity-swish  into  the  street  below  and  hit  all 
manner  of  funny  things.  I  fancy  that  some 
of  the  funny  things  complained.  I  know  the 
police  called,  and  I  seem  to  remember  rather 
a  nasty  letter  from  the  landlord's  agent.  I 
had  a  long  interview  with  mamma  on  the 
subject.  She  pointed  out  that  if  I  slipped 


EBULLIENT    YOUTH  21 

and  fell  I  should  probably  make  a  nasty  dent 
in  the  pavement,  and  with  many  tears  I 
promised  to  relinquish  the  practice. 

I  used  to  ride  on  the  Heath  when  I  had 
the  opportunity,  but  I  cannot  pretend  that 
I  was  up  to  the  standard  of  the  G.E.  I  do 
not  think  I  ever  rode  up  a  staircase.  I  cer- 
tainly never  threw  my  horse  down  on  the 
marble  floor  of  the  hall  of  the  Warren.  There 
were  several  reasons  for  this.  Firstly,  the 
Warren  had  not  got  a  hall,  and  if  it  had  had 
a  hall,  the  hall  would  not  have  had  a  marble 
floor.  Secondly,  the  horses  I  rode  were  likely 
to  be  wanted  again,  being  in  fact  the  ponies 
that  unsuspecting  tradesmen  stabled  at  Cat- 
ley  Mews.  Bogey  Nutter  looked  after  them, 
and  I  could  always  do  what  I  liked  with 
Bogey.  He  was  perhaps  the  most  profuse 
proposer  I  ever  met.  At  one  time  he  always 
proposed  to  me  once  a  day  and  twice  on  Bank 
holidays.  I  was  such  a  dashing,  attractive 
creature,  what  ? 

As  to  my  education,  a  good  deal  depends 
on  what  is  meant  by  education.  The  kind 
that  was  ladled  out  at  the  County  Council 
establishment  made  little  effect  upon  me. 
But  I  was  pretty  quick  at  figures,  and  knew 
that  an  investment  of  half-a-crown  at  eleven 
to  eight  should  bring  me  in  a  profit  of  three- 
and  five — provided  that  the  horse  won  and 
the  man  at  the  fishmonger's  round  the  corner 
paid  up.  My  brother  Lemberg  had  the 
same  talent.  If  he  bought  a  packet  of  fags 
and  paid  with  a  ten-shilling  note,  he  could 


22  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

always  negotiate  the  change  so  that  he  made 
ninepence  for  himself  and  had  the  cigarettes 
thrown  in.  His  only  mistake  was  in  trying 
to  do  it  twice  at  the  same  shop,  but  the  scar 
over  his  right  eye  hardly  shows  now.  A 
sharp-cornered  tobacco-tin  was  not  the  thing 
to  have  hit  him  with  anyhow. 

For  autobiographical  purposes  always  treat 
a  deficiency  as  if  it  were  a  gift.  The  G.E. 
was  apparently  a  duffer  at  arithmetic,  but 
she  tells  you  so  in  a  way  that  makes  you 
admire  her  for  it.  All  the  same  I  wish  I  had 
been  one  of  those  factory-girls  that  she  used 
to  reclaim  in  their  dinner-hour ;  I  am  funda- 
mentally honest,  but  I  never  could  miss  a 
chance  when  it  was  thrown  at  me. 

My  education  in  dancing  was  irregular, 
as  that  greasy  Italian  did  not  wheel  his 
piano  round  every  week.  However  I  acquired 
sufficient  proficiency  to  attract  attention,  and 
that  is  the  great  thing  in  life.  The  Italian 
offered  me  twopence  a  day  to  go  on  his  round 
with  him  and  dance  while  he  turned  the 
handle.  I  told  Signer  Hokey-pokey  what  I 
thought  of  the  offer,  and  I  have  some  talent 
for  language,  if  not  for  languages.  So,  as 
he  could  not  get  me,  he  did  the  next  best 
thing  and  bought  a  monkey. 

I  was  by  far  the  most  spiritual  of  the 
family.  But  my  brother  Minoru  attended 
chapel  regularly,  until  they  stopped  collecting 
the  offertory  in  open  plates  and  substituted 
locked  boxes  with  a  slot  in  them.  He  found 
another  chapel  that  seemed  more  promising, 


EBULLIENT    YOUTH  28 

but  he  attended  it  only  once.  I  shall  always 
consider  that  the  policeman  was  needlessly 
rough  with  him,  for  Minoru  said  distinctly 
that  he  would  go  quietly. 

My  sisters  and  myself  had  a  fascination 
for  the  other  sex  that  was  almost  incredible. 
At  one  time  we  had  a  Proposal  Competition 
every  week  ;  each  of  us  put  in  sixpence,  and 
the  girl  who  got  the  greatest  number  of  pro- 
posals took  the  pool.  Casey  or  I  generally 
won.  Then  one  week  I  encountered  on  the 
H«ath  the  annual  beanfeast  of  the  Pottey 
Asylum  for  the  Feeble-minded,  and  won  with 
a  score  of  a  hundred  and  seven,  and  I  think 
the  others  said  it  was  not  fair.  Anyhow,  the 
competitions  were  discontinued. 

Really,  the  way  our  lodger  pestered  my 
sisters  and  myself  with  his  absolute  inatten- 
tions is  difficult  to  explain.  Anyone  might 
have  thought  that  he  did  not  know  we  were 
there.  While  the  Proposal  Competitions  were 
on,  not  one  of  us  thought  it  worth  while  to 
waste  time  on  the  man.  We  could  get  a 
better  return  for  the  same  amount  of  fascina- 
tion in  other  quarters.  Afterwards  I  thought 
that  possibly  his  employment  in  the  milk- 
trade  might  be  the  cause  of  his  extraordinary 
mildness,  and  that  it  would  be  kind  to  offer 
him  a  little  encouragement. 

He   usually  went   for  a   walk   on   Sunday 

mornings,    and    one    Sunday    I    said    that    1 

would  accompany  him. 

"Better  not,"  he  said.  "Looks  to  me  like  rain." 

"  But  you  have  an  umbrella,"  I  pointed  out. 


24  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

"  Aye,"  he  said,  "  and  when  two  people 
share  one  umbrella,  they  both  get  all  the 
drippings  from  it  and  none  of  the  protection. 
You  take  a  nice  book  and  read  for  a  bit." 

**  No,"  I  said.  "  I'm  coming  with  you, 
and  though  it's  Leap  Year,  I  definitely  promise 
not  to  propose  to  you." 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  that  makes  a  difference." 

I  thrust  my  arm  into  his  gaily  and  confi- 
dentially, and  he  immediately  unhooked. 
We  went  on  to  the  Heath  together. 

*'  I  was  once  told  by  a  palmist,"  I  said, 
"  that  I  had  a  mysterious  and  magnetic  attrac- 
tion for  men." 

"  Those  palmists  will  say  anything,'*  he 
said.  "  It's  just  the  other  way  round  really." 

"  Perhaps,"  I  said.  "  I  know  I  have  an 
unlimited  capacity  for  love — and  nobody 
seems  to  want  it." 

"  Ah,"  he  said,  "  it's  a  pity  to  be  over- 
stocked with  a  perishable  article.  It  means 
parting  with  it  at  a  loss." 

What  could  I  say  to  a  brute  like  that  ? 
And  I  had  nobody  there  to  protect  me. 

"  I  wish,"  I  said,  "  that  you'd  look  if  I've 
a  fly  in  my  eye." 

"  If  you  had,  you'd  know,"  he  answered. 
"  The  fly  sees  to  that." 

Some  minutes  elapsed  before  I  asked  him 
to  tie  my  shoe-lace. 

He  looked  down  and  said  that  it  was  not 
undone. 

I  simply  turned  round  and  left  him,  I  was 
not  going  to  stay  there  to  be  insulted. 


EBULLIENT    YOUTH  25 

However,  he  must  have  been  ashamed  of 
himself,  for  two  days  later  he  sub-let  his  part 
of  the  floor  in  one  of  the  rooms  at  the  Warren 
to  an  Irish  family.  If  he  was  not  ashamed, 
he  was  frightened. 

Yet,  curiously  enough,  that  cowardly  brute 
moulded  my  future. 

The  influx  of  the  Irish  family  into  the 
Warren  drove  me  out  of  it.  It  made  me  feel 
the  absolute  necessity  for  a  wider  sphere. 

On  leaving  home  I  took  an  indeterminate 
position  in  a  Bayswater  boarding-house.  At 
any  rate,  my  wages  and  food  were  deter- 
mined, but  my  hours  of  work  were  not. 

A  boarding-house  is  a  congeries  of  people 
who  have  come  down.  The  proprietoress 
never  dreamed  that  she  would  have  to  earn 
her  own  living  like  that — though  she  gets 
everything  to  a  knife-edge  certainty  in  the 
first  week.  Then  hi  the  drawing-room  you 
have  military  people  who  have  thundered, 
been  saluted,  been  respected — and  super- 
seded. And  nobody  can  make  worse  clothes 
look  better.  The  cook  explains  why  she's  not 
in  Grosvenor  Square,  and  the  elderly  Swiss 
waiter  says  that  he  has  been  in  places  where 
pace  was  not  everytink.  If  you're  out  looking 
for  depression,  try  a  boarding-house. 

I  stayed  there  a  week  and  then  said  I  was 
going.  The  lady  said  she  knew  the  law  and 
I  couldn't.  So  I  said  I  would  stay,  and  was 
sorry  that  the  state  of  my  nerves  would  mean 
a  good  deal  in  breakages. 

I  left  at  the  end  of  the  week. 


THIRD  EXTRACT 

GLADSTONE — MR.    LLOYD    GEORGE — IN- 
MEMORISON — DR.  BENGER  HORLICK. 

AFTER  this  I  had  a  long  succession  of  different 
situations.  It  is  possible  for  a  girl  to  learn  the 
work  of  any  branch  of  domestic  service  in  a 
week,  if  she  wishes  to  do  it,  with  the  exception 
of  the  work  of  a  cook  or  a  personal  maid. 
But  then,  it  is  quite  possible  to  take  a  situa- 
tion as  a  cook,  and  to  keep  it,  without  knowing 
anything  appreciable  about  the  work.  Thou- 
sands of  women  have  done  it,  and  are  still 
doing  it.  I  never  went  as  personal  maid — I 
dislike  familiarity — but  with  that  exception 
I  played,  so  to  speak,  every  instrument  in 
the  orchestra. 

I  acquired  an  excellent  stock  of  testimonials, 
of  which  some  were  genuine.  The  others 
were  due  to  the  kindly  heart  and  vivid  imagina- 
tion of  my  sister  Casey,  now  Mrs.  Morgenstein. 

I  rarely  kept  my  places,  and  never  kept 
my  friends.  The  only  thing  I  did  keep  was 
a  diary.  A  diary  is  evidence.  So  if  you  see 
anything  about  anybody  in  these  pages,  you 
can  believe  it  without  hesitation.  Do,  please. 
You  see,  if  you  hesitate,  you  may  never 
believe  it. 

I  well  remember  the  first  and  only  time  that 
I  met  Gladstone.  I  was  staying  with  Lady 

26 


GLADSTONE  27 

Bilberry  at  the  time  at  her  house  in  Half 
Moon  Street.  She  was  a  woman  with  real 
charm  and  wit,  but  somewhat  irritable.  Most 
of  the  people  I've  met  were  irritable  or  became 
so,  and  I  can't  think  why.  I  may  add  that 
I  only  stayed  out  my  month  as  too  much  was 
expected.  Besides,  I'd  been  told  there  was 
a  boy  for  the  rough  work  and  there  never 
was. 

But  to  return  to  Gladstone.  I  wrote  down 
every  precious  word  of  my  conversation  with 
him  at  the  time,  and  the  eager  and  excited 
reader  may  now  peruse  it  in  full. 

GLADSTONE  :  Lady  Bilberry  at  home  ? 

MARGE  :  Yes,  sir. 

GLADSTONE  :  Thanks. 

MARGE  :  What  name,  please  ? 
He  gave  me  his  name  quite  simply,  without 
any  attempt  at  rudeness  or  facetiousness.  I 
should  say  that  this  was  typical  of  the  whole 
character  of  the  man.  With  a  beautiful  and 
punctilious  courtesy  he  removed  his  hat — 
not  a  very  good  hat — on  entering  the  house. 
I  formed  the  impression  from  the  ease  with 
which  he  did  this  that  the  practice  must  have 
been  habitual  with  him. 

The  only  thing  that  mars  this  cherished 
memory  is  that  it  was  not  the  Gladstone  you 
mean,  nor  any  relative  of  his,  but  a  gentleman 
of  the  same  name  who  had  called  to  see  if  he 
could  interest  her  ladyship  in  a  scheme  for 
the  recovery  of  some  buried  treasure.  He 
did  not  stay  long,  and  Lady  Bilberry  said  I 
ought  to  have  known  better. 


About  this  time  I  received  by  post  a  set  of 
verses  which  bear  quite  a  resemblance  to  the 
senile  vivacity  of  the  verses  which  the  real 
Gladstone  addressed  to  my  illustrious  example 
of  autobiographical  art.  The  verses  I  re- 
ceived were  anonymous,  and  as  a  matter  of 
fact  the  postmark  on  the  envelope  was 
Beaconsfield.  Still,  you  never  know,  do  you  ? 

MARGE. 

When   Pentonville's   over   and   comes   the 

release, 
With  a  year's  supervision  perhaps  by  the 

p'lice, 
Your  longing  to  meet  all  your  pals  may  be 

large, 
But  make  an  exception,  and  do  not  ask 

Marge. 

She's  Aspasia,  Pavlova,  Tom  Sayers,  Tod 
Sloan, 

Spinoza,  and  Barnum,  and  Mrs.  Chapone  ; 

For  a  bloke  that  has  only  just  got  his  dis- 
charge, 

She's  rather  too  dazzling  a  patchwork,  is 
Marge. 

Never  mind,  never  mind,  you  have  got  to 

go  slow, 
One  section  a  year  is  the  most  you  can 

know ; 

If  you  study  a  life- time,  you'll  jest  on  the 

barge 
Of  Charon  with  madd'ningly  manifold  Marge. 


MR.    LLOYD    GEORGE  29 

By  the  way,  whenever  we  change  houses  a 
special  pantechnicon  has  to  be  engaged  to 
take  all  the  complimentary  verses  that  have 
from  time  to  time  been  addressed  to  me. 
Must  be  a  sort  of  something  about  me  some- 
how, don't  you  think  ? 

I  cannot  pretend  that  I  was  on  the  same 
terms  of  intimate  friendship  with  Mr.  Lloyd 
George.  I  spoke  to  him  only  once. 

It  was  when  we  were  in  Downing  Street. 
There  was  quite  a  crowd  of  us  there,  and  it 
had  been  an  evening  of  exalted  and  roseate 
patriotism.  I  gazed  up  at  the  window  of 
No.  10  and  said,  as  loudly  as  I  could  : 

"  Lloyd  George  !  Lloyd  George  !  " 

Most  of  the  others  in  the  crowd  said  the 
same  thing  with  equal  force.  Then  an  un- 
educated policeman  came  up  to  me  and 
asked  me  to  pass  along,  please,  adding  that 
Mr.  Lloyd  George  was  not  in  London.  So, 
simply  replying  "  All  right,  face,"  I  pass- 
alongpleased. 

However,  in  spite  of  all  that  bound  me  so 
closely  to  the  great  political  world,  I  could 
not  help  feeling  the  claims  of  literature.  I 
am  sensitive  to  every  claim.  It  is  the  claim 
of  history,  for  example,  that  compels  me  to 
write  my  autobiography.  I  seem  to  see  all 
around  me  a  thousand  human  arts  and 
activities  crying  for  my  help  and  interest. 
They  seem  to  say  "  Marge,  Marge,  more 
Marge  !  "  in  the  words  that  Goethe  himself 
might  have  used.  And  whenever  I  hear  the 
call  I  have  to  give  myself. 


30  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

I  doubt  if  any  girl  ever  gave  herself  away 
quite  as  much  as  I  have  done. 

One  day  in  November  I  met  Chummie 
Popbright  in  the  neighbourhood  of  Cambridge 
Circus.  He  was  a  man  with  very  little  joie  de 
vivre,  venire  a  terre,  or  esprit  de  corps.  He 
had  fair  hair  and  no  manners,  and  was  very, 
very  fond  of  me.  He  held  a  position  in  the 
Post  Office,  and  was,  in  fact,  emptying  a 
pillar-box  when  I  met  him.  I  record  the 
conversation. 

CHUMMIE  :  Blessed  if  it  ain't  Marge  !  And 
what  would  you  like  for  a  Christmas  present  ? 

MARGE  :  I  want  to  spend  a  week  or  so  at 
the  house  of  the  great  poet,  Lord  Inmemori- 
son.  If  you  really  wish  to  please  me,  you  will 
use  your  influence  to  get  me  a  job  there. 
Your  uncle  being  Inmemorison's  butler,  you 
ought  to  be  able  to  work  it. 

CHUMMIE  :  Might.     What  would  you  go  as  ? 

MARGE  :  Anything — but  temporary  parlour- 
maid is  my  strong  suit. 

CHUMMIE  :  And  what's  your  game  ? 

MARGE  :  I'm  sick  of  patronizing  politicians 
and  want  to  patronize  a  poet.  When  all's 
said  and  done,  Inmemorison  is  a  proper  certi- 
ficated poet.  Besides,  I  want  to  put  some- 
thing by  for  my  rainy  autobiography. 

CHUMMIE  :  Oh,  well.  I'll  try  and  lay  a 
pipe  for  it.  May  come  off  or  may  not. 

Chummie  managed  the  thing  to  perfection. 
My  sister  Casey  wrote  me  one  of  the  best 
testimonials  I  have  ever  had,  and  by  Christ- 
mas I  was  safely  installed  for  a  week.  Chum- 


INMEMORISON  31 

mie's  uncle  treated  me  with  the  utmost  con- 
sideration, and  it  is  to  him  that  I  owe  many 
of  the  thrilling  details  that  I  am  now  able 
to  present  to  the  panting  public.  Although 
there  was  a  high  leather  screen  in  the  drawing- 
room  which  was  occasionally  useful  to  me, 
my  opportunities  for  direct  observation  were 
limited. 

Lord  Inmemorison  had  a  magnificent  semi- 
detached mansion  (including  a  bath-room, 
h.  and  c.)  in  one  of  the  wildest  and  loneliest 
parts  of  Wandsworth  Common.  The  rugged 
beauty  of  the  scenery  around  is  reflected  in 
many  of  his  poems. 

There  were,  as  was  to  be  expected,  several 
departures  from  ordinary  convention  in  the 
household.  Dinner  was  at  seven.  The  poet 
went  to  bed  immediately  after  dinner,  and 
punctually  at  ten  reappeared  in  the  drawing- 
room  and  began  reading  his  poems  aloud. 

The  family  generally  went  to  bed  at  ten 
sharp. 

I  heard  him  read  once.  There  were  visitors 
in  the  house  who  wished  to  hear  the  great 
man,  and  it  was  after  midnight  before  a 
general  retirement  could  take  place.  He  had 
a  rich,  sonorous,  over-proof,  pre-war  voice, 
considerable  irritability,  and  a  pretty  girl 
sitting  on  his  knee.  The  last  item  was,  of 
course,  an  instance  of  poetical  licence. 

The  girl  had  asked  him  to  read  from 
"  Maud  "  and  he  had  consented.  He  began 
with  his  voice  turned  down  so  low  that  in 


32  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

my  position  behind  the  screen  I  could  only 
just  catch  the  opening  lines  : 

"  Hail  to  thee,  blithe  spirit ! 
Bird  thou  never  wert  .  .  ." 

He  opened  the  throttle  a  little  wider  when 
he  came  to  the  passage : 

"  His  head  was  bare,  his  matted  hair 
Was  buried  in  the  sand." 

He  read  that  last  line  "  was  serried  in  the 
band,"  but  immediately  corrected  himself. 
And  the  poignant  haunting  repetition  of  the 
last  lines  of  the  closing  stanza  were  given  out 
on  the  full  organ  : 

"  And  everywhere  that  Mary  went — 
And  everywhere  that  Mary  went — 
And  everywhere  that  Mary  went — 
The  lamb  was  sure  to  go." 

It  was  a  great — a  wonderful  experience  for 
me,  and  I  shall  never  forget  it. 

I  have  spoken  of  his  irritability.  It  is  not 
unnatural  in  a  great  poet.  He  must  live  with 
his  exquisite  sentient  nerves  screwed  up  to 
such  a  pitch  that  at  any  moment  something 
may  give. 

For  example,  one  evening  he  was  sitting 
with  a  girl  on  his  knee,  and  had  just  read 
to  her  these  enchanting  lines  in  which  he 
speaks  of  hearing  the  cuckoo  call. 

INMEMORISON  (gruffly  and  suddenly) :  What 
bird  says  cuckoo  ? 

GIRL  (with  extreme  nervous  agitation) :  The 
rabbit. 


INMEMORISON  33 

INMEMORISON  :  No,  you  fool — it's  the  night- 
ingale. 

The  girl  burst  into  tears  and  said  she  would 
not  play  any  more.  I  think  she  was  wrong. 
Whenever  I  hear .  any  criticism  of  myself  I 
always  take  it  meekly  and  gently,  whether  it 
is  right  or  wrong — it  has  never  been  right  yet 
— and  try  to  see  if  I  cannot  learn  something 
from  it.  What  the  girl  should  have  said 
was  :  "  Now  it's  your  turn  to  go  out,  and 
we'll  think  of  something." 

Another  occasion  when  Inmemorison  was 
perhaps  more  pardonably  annoyed  was  when 
a  young  undergraduate  asked  him  to  read 
out  one  of  his  poems. 

"  Which  ?  "  said  Inmemorison. 

I  am  told  that  the  thirty  seconds  of  absolute 
silence  which  followed  this  question  seemed 
like  an  eternity,  and  that  the  agony  on  the 
young  man's  face  was  Aeschylean.  He  did 
not  know  any  precise  answer  to  the  question. 

"  Which  ?  "  repeated  Inmemorison,  like  the 
booming  of  a  great  bell  at  a  young  man's 
funeral. 

The  young  man  made  a  wild  and  misjudged 
effort,  and  got  right  off  the  target. 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  one  of  my  greatest 
favourites  of  course  is  '  Kissingcup's  Race.'  " 

"  Is  it,  indeed  ?  "  said  the  Poet.  "  If  you 
turn  to  the  left  on  leaving  the  house,  the 
second  on  the  right  will  take  you  straight  to 
the  station." 

The  young  man  never  forgave  it.  And 
that,  so  I  have  always  been  told,  is  how  the 


84 

first  Browning  Society  came  to  be  founded. 

It  was  a  meeting  with  this  undergraduate — 
purely  accidental  on  my  part — in  the  roman- 
tic garden  of  the  poet's  house  that  first  turned 
my  mind  towards  the  university  town  of 
Oxbridge.  I  had  no  difficulty  in  finding 
employment  as  a  waitress  there  in  a  restaurant 
where  knowledge  of  the  business  was  consi- 
dered less  essential  than  a  turn  for  repartee 
and  some  gift  for  keeping  the  young  of  our 
great  nobility  in  their  proper  place.  It  was 
not  long  before  I  had  made  the  acquaintance 
of  quite  a  number  of  undergraduates.  Some 
of  them  had  a  marked  tendency  towards 
rapidity,  but  soon  learned  that  the  regulation 
of  the  pace  would  remain  with  me. 

One  Sunday  morning  I  had  consented  to 
go  for  a  walk  with  one  of  my  young  admirers — 
a  nice  boy,  with  more  nerve  than  I  have  ever 
encountered  in  any  human  being  except  my- 
self. It  happened  by  chance  that  we  en- 
countered the  Dean  of  his  college.  The  Dean, 
with  an  unusual  condescension — for  which 
there  may  possibly  have  been  a  reason — 
stopped  to  speak  to  my  companion,  who 
without  the  least  hesitation  introduced  the 
Dean  to  me  as  his  sister. 

That  was  my  first  meeting  with  Dr.  Benger 
Horlick,  the  celebrated  Dean  of  Belial. 

No  social  occasion  has  ever  yet  found  me 
at  a  loss.  The  more  difficult  and  dramatic 
it  is,  the  more  thoroughly  do  I  enjoy  its 
delicate  manipulation.  I  could  not  deny  the 
relationship  which  had  been  asserted,  without 


DR.    BENGER    HORLICK  85 

involving  my  young  friend.  The  only  alter- 
native was  to  play  up  to  it,  and  I  played  up. 
The  perfect  management  of  old  men  is  best 
understood  by  young  girls. 

I  told  him  that  I  was  staying  with  mamma, 
and  mentioned  a  suitable  hotel,  adding  that 
I  was  so  sorry  I  had  to  return  to  town  that 
afternoon,  as  I  had  begun  to  love  the  scholas- 
tic peace  of  Oxbridge  and  valued  so  much  the 
opportunity  of  meeting  its  greatest  men.  I 
was  bright  and  poetical  in  streaks,  and  every 
shy — if  I  may  use  the  expression — hit  the 
coco-nut.  Sometimes  I  glanced  at  Willie,  my 
pseudo-brother.  His  face  twitched  a  little, 
but  he  never  actually  gave  way  to  his  feelings. 
The  Dean  had  ceased  to  pay  much  attention 
to  him. 

For  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour  the  Dean 
strolled  along  with  us.  At  parting,  he  held 
my  hand — for  a  minute  longer  than  was 
strictly  necessary — and  said  : 

"  You  have  interested  me — er — profoundly. 
May  I  hope  that  when  you  get  back  to  Grosve- 
nor  Square,  you  will  sometimes  spare  a  few 
moments  from  the  fashionable  circles  in  which 
you  move,  and  write  to  me  ?  " 

I  said  that  it  would  be  a  great  honour  to 
me  to  be  permitted  to  do  so. 

"  I  hope,"  he  added,  "  that  you  will  visit 
Oxbridge  again,  and  that  you  will  then  renew 
an  acquaintance  which,  though  accidental  in 
its  origin,  has  none  the  less  impressed  me — 
er — very  much." 

After  his  departure  Willie  became  hilarious 


36  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

and-  I  became  very  angry  with  him.  He 
persisted  that  everything  was  all  right.  I 
had  put  up  a  fine  performance  and  had  only 
to  continue  it.  The  Dean  would  no  doubt 
write  to  me  at  Grosvenor  Square,  and  Willie 
assured  me  that  he  had  his  father's  butler 
on  a  string,  and  that  the  butler  sorted  the 
letters.  I  would  receive  the  Dean's  epistles 
at  any  address  I  would  give  him,  and  would 
reply  on  the  Grosvenor  Square  notepaper. 

"  I've  got  chunks  of  it  in  a  writing-case  at 
my  rooms,"  he  said,  "  and  I'll  send  it  round 
to  you." 

I  had  to  consent  to  this.  However,  the 
next  day  I  skipped  for  London,  somewhat  to 
the  disappointment  of  the  restaurant  that  I 
adorned,  and  still  more  to  the  disappointment 
of  Willie.  But,  as  I  wrote  to  him,  he  had 
brought  it  on  himself.  I  could  not  take  the 
risk  of  another  accidental  meeting  with  Dr. 
Benger  Horlick. 

Nor,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  did  we  ever  meet 
again.  But  for  three  years  we  corresponded 
with  some  frequency  ;  it  was  a  thin-ice,  hign- 
wire  business,  but  I  pulled  it  through. 

No  doubt  the  task  was  made  easier  for  me 
by  the  fact  that  the  Dean  was  a  singularly 
simple-minded  man.  Reverence  for  the  aris- 
tocracy had  become  with  him  almost  a 
religion.  When  he  was  brought — or  believed 
himself  to  be  brought — in  contact  with  the 
aristocracy,  his  intellectual  vision  closed  in  a 
swoon  of  ecstasy.  Snob  ?  Oh,  dear,  no ! 
Of  course  not.  What  can  have  made  you 


DR.    BENGER   HORLICK  87 

think  that  ?  It  was  simply  that  the  aristo- 
cracy appealed  to  himvery  much  as  romance  did 
— he  was  outside  it,  but  liked  to  get  a  near  view. 

The  G.E.  found  that  letters,  however  de- 
lightful, bored  her  when  they  were  scattered 
through  a  biography.  For  that  reason  she 
gave  one  set  of  letters  all  together.  I  do  not 
see  myself  why,  if  a  thing  bores  you  when 
you  get  a  little  of  it  at  a  time,  it  should  bore 
you  less  when  you  get  a  lot  of  it.  But,  deter- 
mined to  follow  my  brilliant  model  with  simple 
faith  and  humility,  I  now  append  extracts 
from  the  letters  I  received  from  Dr.  Benger 
Horlick. 

"  I  wish  I  could  persuade  you  to  be  less 
precise  in  your  language.  If  you  say  what 
your  opinion  is,  you  should  take  care  to  be 
beautiful  but  unintelligible.  Commit  your- 
self to  nothing.  Words  were  given  us  to 
conceal  our  thoughts,  and  with  a  little  prac- 
tice and  self-discipline  will  conceal  them  even 
from  ourselves.  A  candid  friend  once  com- 
plained to  me  that  in  my  translation  from  the 
Greek  it  was  sometimes  impossible  for  him 
to  know  which  of  two  different  lectiones  I 
was  translating.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  though 
I  did  not  tell  him  this,  I  did  not  know  either. 
Especially  useful  is  this  when  one  is  confronted 
with  a  rude,  challenging,  direct  question  as  to 
any  point  in  religion  or  politics  ;  I  reply  with 
a  sonorous  and,  I  hope,  well-balanced  sentence, 
from  which  the  actual  meaning  has  been  care- 
fully extracted,  and  so  escape  in  the  fog.  It 
is  indeed  from  one  point  of  view  a  mercy  that 


88  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

most  people  are  too  cowardly  or  too  ashamed 
to  say  that  they  have  failed  to  comprehend. 
Yet  if  they  had  my  passion  for  truth  it  might 
be  better.  Truth  is  very  precious  to  me — 
sometimes  too  precious  to  give  away." 

"  It  is  good  of  you  to  say  that  the  fourteen 
pages  of  good  advice  did  not  bore  you.  Can 
it  have  been  that  you  did  not  read  them  ? 
No  Dean — and  perhaps  no  don — who  has 
been  in  that  portentous  position  as  long  as 
I  have  can  fail  to  become  a  perennial  stream 
of  advice.  It  is  the  Nemesis  of  those  who  have 
all  their  lives  been  treated  with  more  respect 
than  they  have  deserved.  I  am  the  only 
exception  with  which  I  am  acquainted. 
Child,  why  do  you  not  make  more  use  of  your 
noble  gifts  for  dancing,  amateur  theatricals, 
and  general  conversation  ?  And  yet  I'm  not 
grumbling.  Only  I  mean  to  say,  don't  you 
know  ?  Of  course,  they  all  do  it — the  people 
in  the  great  world  to  which  you,  and  occa- 
sionally I,  belong.  Still,  there  it  is.  isn't  it  ? 
And  you  write  me  such  soothing  full-cream 
letters  with  only  an  occasional  snag  in  them. 
So  bless  you,  my  child.  I  do  trust  that  the 
report  which  comes  to  me  that  you  are  going 
with  the  Prince  of  Wales,  Mrs.  H.  Ward,  and 
a  Mr.  Arthur  Roberts  to  shoot  kangaroos  in 
Australia  is  at  least  exaggerated.  These 
marsupials,  though  their  appearance  is  suffi- 
ciently eccentric  to  suggest  the  conscientious 
objector,  will — I  am  credibly  informed — 
fight  desperately  in  defence  of  their  young. 
If  I  may  venture  to  suggest,  try  rabbits." 


DR.    BENGER   HORLICK  89 

"  I  am  delighted  to  hear  that  you  are  not 
the  author  of  the  two  articles  attacking 
Society.  The  fact  that  they  happen  to  be 
signed  with  the  name  of  another  well-known 
lady  had  made  me  think  it  possible  that  this 
might  be  the  case.  Society  ?  It  is  a  great 
mystery.  I  can  hardly  think  of  it  without 
taking  off  my  boots  and  prostrating  myself 
orientally.  To  criticize  it  is  a  mistake ;  it 
is  even,  if  I  may  for  once  use  a  harsh  word, 
subversive.  It  is  the  only  one  we've  got. 
Oh,  hush  !  Only  in  whispers  at  the  dead  of 
night  to  the  most  trusted  friend  under  the 
seal  of  secrecy  can  we  think  of  criticizing  it. 
But  holding,  as  I  do,  perhaps  the  most  im- 
portant public  position  in  the  Continent  of 
Europe,  if  not  in  the  whole  world — responsible, 
as  I  am,  for  what  may  be  called  the  sustenance 
of  the  next  generation — I  do  feel  called  upon 
to  carry  out  any  repairs  and  re-decoration  of 
the  social  fabric  that  may  be  required.  You 
with  your  universal  influence  which — until 
Einstein  arrives — will  be  the  only  possible 
explanation  of  the  vagaries  in  the  orbit  of 
Mercury,  can  do  as  much,  .or  nearly  as  much. 
Do  it.  But  never  speak  of  it.  Oh,  hush  ! 
(Sorry — I  forgot  I'd  mentioned  that  before.) 

"  In  reply  to  your  inquiry,  I  never  read 
*  Robert  Elsmere,'  but  understand  from  a 
private  source  that  it  saved  many  young 
men  from  reading  '  David  Grieve.'  Your 
second  inquiry  as  to  the  lady-love  of  my  first 
youth  is  violent — very  violent.  Suppose  you 
mind  your  own  business." 


FOURTH  EXTRACT 
THE  SOLES 

I  DO  not  know  why  we  were  called  the  Soles. 
Enemies  said  it  was  because  we  were  flat, 
fishy,  and  rather  expensive. 

Our  set  comprised  the  upper  servants  of 
some  of  the  best  houses  in  Mayfair.  Looking 
back  at  it  now,  I  can  see  that  no  similar  body 
ever  had  such  a  tremendous  influence.  It 
may  not  have  been  entirely  due  to  us  that 
gravity  varies  inversely  as  the  square  of  the 
distance,  but  at  least  -we  acquiesced.  And 
what  we  did  in  home  and  foreign  politics  has 
scarcely  yet  been  suspected. 

The  reason  for  our  influence  is  sufficiently 
obvious.  Our  great  leader,  James  Arthur 
Bunting,  was  perhaps  the  most  perfect  butler 
that  the  world  has  yet  seen ;  his  magnificent 
presence,  plummy  voice,  exquisite  tact,  and 
wide  knowledge  made  him  beyond  price.  We 
had  other  butlers  whom  it  would  have  been 
almost  equally  difficult  to  replace.  We  had 
chefs  who  with  a  chain  of  marvellous  dinners 
bound  their  alleged  employers  to  their  chariot- 
wheels.  Nominally,  Parliament  ruled  the 
country,  but  we  never  had  any  doubt  who 
ruled  Parliament. 

To  take  but  one  instance,  the  sudden  volte 
face  of  Lord  Baringstoke  on  the  Home  Rule 

40 


THE    SOLES  41 

Question.  This  created  a  great  sensation  at 
the  time,  and  various  explanations  were  sug- 
gested to  account  for  it.  Nobody  guessed 
the  truth.  The  fact  is  that  Mr.  Bunting 
tendered  his  resignation. 

Lord  Baringstoke  was  much  distressed.  An 
increase  of  salary  was  immediately  suggested 
and  waved  aside. 

"  It  is  not  that,  m'lord,"  said  Bunting. 
"It  is  a  question  of  principle.  Your  lord- 
ship's expressed  views  as  to  Ireland  are  not, 
if  I  may  say  so,  the  views  of  my  friends  and 
of  myself.  And  on  that  subject  we  feel 
deeply.  Preoccupied  with  that  difference,  if 
I  remained,  I  could  no  longer  do  justice  to 
your  lordship  nor  to  myself.  My  wounded 
and  bleeding  heart " 

"  Oh,  never  mind  your  bleeding  heart, 
Bunting,"  said  Baringstoke.  **  Do  I  under- 
stand that  this  is  your  only  reason  for  wanting 
to  go  ?  " 

"  That  is  so,  m'lord." 

"Then,  supposing  that  I  reconsidered  my 
views  as  to  Ireland  and  found  that  they  were 
in  fact  the  opposite  of  what  I  had  previously 
supposed,  you  would  remain  ?  " 

"  With  very  great  pleasure." 

"  Then  in  that  case  you  had  better  wait  a 
few  days.  I'm  inclined  to  think  that  every- 
thing can  be  arranged." 

14  Very  good,  m'lord." 

Less  than  a  week  later,  Lord  Baringstoke's 
public  recantation  was  the  talk  of  London. 
In  a  speech  of  considerable  eloquence  he 


42  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

showed  how  the  merciless  logic  of  facts  had 
convinced  his  intellect,  and  his  conscience 
had  compelled  him  to  abandon  the  position 
he  had  previously  taken  up.  Fortunately, 
you  can  prove  absolutely  anything  about 
Ireland.  It  is  merely  a  question  of  what  facts 
you  will  select  and  what  you  will  suppress. 

Mr.  Bunting  is,  I  believe,  still  with  Lord 
Baringstoke.  This  was,  perhaps,  one  of  the 
principal  triumphs  of  the  Soles.  There  were 
many  others.  We  had  our  own  secret  service, 
and  I  should  here  acknowledge  with  respect 
and  admiration  the  Gallic  ingenuity  of  two 
of  the  Soles,  Monsieur  Colbert  and  Monsieur 
Normand,  in  reconstructing  fragmentary  let- 
ters taken  from  the  waste-papejr  baskets  of 
the  illustrious. 

Naturally,  we  had  to  suffer  from  the 
jealousy  and  malice  of  those  who  had  not  been 
asked  to  join  us,  and  a  rumour  even  was  spread 
abroad  that  we  played  bridge  for  sixpence  a 
hundred.  There  was  no  truth  in  it.  There 
have  been,  and  still  are,  gambling  clubs  among 
the  younger  men-servants  of  the  West-end, 
but  we  never  gambled.  Mr.  Bunting  would 
not  have  liked  it  at  all.  We  were  serious. 
We  did  try  to  live  up  to  our  ideals,  and  some 
of  our  members  actually  succeeded  in  living 
beyond  their  incomes.  Our  principal  recrea- 
tion was  pencil-games,  mostly  of  our  own 
invention. 

In  this  connection  I  have  rather  a  sad 
incident  to  relate.  On  one  occasion  we  had  a 
competition  to  see  which  of  us  could  write 


THE    SOLES  43 

the  flattest  and  least  pointed  epigram  in 
rhyme.  The  prize  for  men  consisted  of  two 
out-size  Havannah  cigars,  formerly  the  pro- 
perty of  Lord  Baringstoke,  kindly  presented 
by  Mr.  Bunting. 

Percy  Binder,  first  footman  to  the  Earl  of 
Dilwater,  was  extremely  anxious  to  secure 
this  prize.  He  took  as  the  subject  of  his 
epigram  the  sudden  death  of  a  man  on  rising 
from  prayer.  This  was  in  such  lamentably 
bad  taste  that  he  did  not  win  the  prize,  but 
otherwise  it  would  have  certainly  been  his. 
His  four  lines  could  not  have  been  surpassed 
for  clumsy  and  laboured  imbecility.  The 
last  two  ran  : 

"  But  when  for  aid  he  ceased  to  beg, 
The  wily  devil  broke  his  leg." 

And  then  came  a  terrible  discovery.  Percy 
Binder  had  stolen  these  lines  from  the  auto- 
biography of  my  own  G.E.  She  says,  by  the 
way,  that  their  author  was  "  the  last  of  the 
wits."  But  how  can  you  be  last  in  a  race  in 
which  you  never  start  ?  It  is  always  safe  to 
say  what  you  think,  but  sometimes  dangerous 
to  give  your  reasons  for  thinking  it. 

That,  however,  is  a  digression.  Percy 
Binder  was  given  to  understand  that  we  did 
not  know  him  in  future.  Mr.  Bunting  was  so 
upset  that  he  declared  the  competition  can- 
celled, and  smoked  the  prize  himself.  He 
said  afterwards  that  what  annoyed  him  most 
was  the  foolishness  of  Mr.  Binder's  idea  that 
his  plagiarism  would  be  undetected. 

"  He  is,"  said  Mr.  Bunting,  "  like  the  silly 


44  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

ostrich  that  lays  its  eggs  in  the  sand  in  order 
to  escape  the  vigilance  of  its  pursuers." 

One  of  our  pencil-games  was  known  as 
Inverted  Conundrums,  and  played  as  follows. 
One  person  gave  the  answer  to  a  riddle,  and 
mentioned  one  word  to  be  used  in  the  ques- 
tion. The  rest  then  had  to  write  down  what 
they  thought  the  question  would  be.  The 
deafness  of  dear  Violet  Orpington  sometimes 
spoiled  this  game. 

For  instance,  I  had  once  given  as  an  answer 
"  bee-hive,"  and  said  that  one  word  in  the 
question  was  "  correct." 

The  first  question  I  read  out  was  from 
George  Leghorn.  He  had  written :  "  If  a 
cockney  nurse  wished  to  correct  a  child,  what 
insect-home  would  she  name  ?  "  This  was 
accepted. 

The  next  question  was  from  Violet  Orping- 
ton :  "  If  you  had  never  corrected  a  naughty 
boy  before,  where  would  you  correct  him  ?  " 

"  But,  Violet,"  I  said,  "  the  answer  to  that 
could  not  be  '  bee-hive.'  " 

"  Oh,"  she  said,  "  you  said  *  hive,'  did  you  ? 
I  thought  you  said  something  else." 

I  have  never  been  able  to  guess  what  it 
was  she  thought  I  had  said  ;  and  she  refused 
to  tell  me. 

Another  of  our  pencil-games  was  Missing 
Rhymes.  One  of  us  would  write  a  decca- 
syllabic  couplet — we  always  called  it  a  quat- 
rain, as  being  a  better-class  word — and  the 
rhyme  in  the  second  line  would  not  be  actually 
given  but  merely  indicated. 


THE    SOLES  45 

For  example,  I  myself  wrote  the  following 
little  sonnet : 

"  I  have  an  adoration  for 
One  person  only,  namely  je" 

To  any  reader  who  is  familiar  with  the 
French  language,  this  may  seem  almost  too 
easy,  but  I  doubt  if  anybody  who  knew  no 
language  but  modern  Greek  would  guess  it. 
For  the  benefit  of  the  uninitiated  I  may  add 
that  the  French  word  je  is  pronounced 
"  mwor,"  thus  supplying  the  missing  rhyme. 

Millie  Wyandotte  disgraced  herself  with 
the  following  lyric : 

"  After  her  dance,  Salome,  curtseying,  fell, 
And  shocked  the  Baptist  with  her  scream 
of  '  Bother  !  ' 

She  had  no  sooner  read  it  out  than  Mr. 
Bunting  rose  in  his  place  and  said  gravely  : 

"  I  can  only  speak  definitely  for  myself, 
but  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  all  present,  with 
the  exception  of  Miss  Wyandotte,  have  too 
much  refinement  to  be  able  to  guess  correctly 
the  missing  rhyme  in  this  case."  Loud  and 
prolonged  applause. 

George  Leghorn  was  particularly  happy  at 
these  pencil  games,  and  to  him  is  due  this 
very  clever  combination  of  the  lyrical  and 
the  acrostical : 

"  My  first  a  man  is,  and  my  next  a  trap  ; 
My    whole's    forbidden,     lest    it    cause 
trouble." 

The  answer  to  the  acrostic  is  "  mantrap  "  ; 
the  missing  rhyme  is  "  mishap."  The  entire 
solution  was  given  in  something  under  half 


46  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

an  hour  by  Popsie  Bantam.  She  was  a  very 
bright  girl,  and  afterwards  married  a  man  in 
the  Guards  (L.N.W.R.). 

Mr.  Bunting,  a  rather  strong  party-politi- 
cian, one  night  submitted  this  little  triolet : 

"  When  the  Great  War  new  weapons  bade 

us  forge, 

Whom    did    the    nation'  trust  ?     'Twas 
thou,  Asquith !  " 

The  missing  rhyme  was  guessed  imme- 
diately, in  two  places,  as  the  auctioneers  say. 

However,  by  our  next  quinquennial  meeting 
Nettie  Minorca  had  thought  out  the  following 
rejoinder : 

"  When  history's  hand  corrects  the  current 

myth, 

Whose  name  will  she  prefer  ?     Tis  thine, 
Lloyd  George." 

Yes,  dear  Nettie  had  a  belated  brilliance — 
the  wit  of  the  staircase,  only  more  so.  We 
always  said  that  Nettie  could  do  wonderful 
things  if  only  she  were  given  time. 

She  was  given  time  ultimately,  and  is  still 
doing  it,  but  that  was  in  a  totally  different 
connection.  She  inserted  an  advertisement 
stating  that  she  was  a  thorough  good  cook. 
First-class  references.  Eight  years  hi  present 
situation  in  Exeter,  and  leaving  because  the 
family  was  going  abroad.  Wages  asked,  £36 
per  annum.  No  kitchen-maid  required.  No 
less  than  twelve  families  were  so  anxious  to 
receive  the  treasure  that  they  offered  her 
return-fare  between  Exeter  and  London,  and 
her  expenses,  to  secure  a  personal  interview 


THE    SOLES  47 

with  her.  She  collected  the  boodle  from  all 
twelve.  And  she  was  living  in  Bryanstone 
Square  at  the  time.  She  is  lost  to  us  now. 

As  dear  old  Percy  Cochin,  also  one  of  the 
Soles,  once  said  to  me  :  'k  We  are  here  to-day, 
and  gone  at  the  end  of  our  month." 

Violet  Orpington  had  an  arresting  appear- 
ance, and  walked  rather  like  a  policeman  also. 
Her  hair  was  a  rich  raw  sienna,  and  any  man 
would  have  made  love  to  her  had  she  but  carried 
an  ear-trumpet.  She  is  the  "  retiring  Violet  " 
of  verse  seven.*  Millie  Wyandotte  was  mali- 
cious and  unintelligent ;  she  looked  well  in 
white,  but  was  too  heavily  built  for  my  taste. 
I  may  add,  as  evidence  of  my  impartiality, 
that  she  laid  a  table  better  than  any  woman 
I  ever  knew ;  in  fact,  she  took  first  prize  in  a 
laying  competition.  Nettie  Minorca  was 
"  black  but  comely,"  and  had  Spanish  blood 
in  her  veins.  She  is  the  "  gipsy  "  mentioned 
in  verse  one-and-a-half.  Popsie  Bantam  was 
petite.  Her  profile  was  admired,  but  I  always 
thought  it  a  little  beaky  myself.  I  myself 
was  the  least  beautiful,  but  the  most  attrac- 
tive. Allusions  to  me  will  be  found  in  verses 
1,  2,  8,  5,  6,  12-19,  24,  57-60,  74,  77,  87, 
97,  and  102-8468. 

George  Leghorn  was  an  Albino,  but  his 
figure  was  very  graceful.  From  the  specimen 
which  I  have  already  given,  it  will  be  easy  to 
believe  that  his  wit  was  fluorescent,  deter- 

*  Publisher :  But  you  don't  give  the  vereea. 
Author:    I  know.     It's  a  little  idea  I  got  from  an  excel- 
lent Sunday  newspaper. 


48  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

gent,  and  vibratory.  He  afterwards  became 
a  well-known  personality  'on  the  turf.  He 
gained  a  considerable  fortune  by  laying  the 
odcjs  ;  his  family  were  all  reputed  to  be  good 
layers,. 

Dear  old  Peter  Cochin  was  staunch  and 
true.  He  reminds  me  of  something  that  my 
illustrious  model  says  of  another  man.  She 
says  that  he  "  would  risk  telling  me  or  anyone 
he  loved,  before  confiding  to  an  inner  circle, 
faults  which  both  he  and  I  think  might  be 
corrected."  Grammar  was  no  doubt  made  for 
slaves-— not  for  the  brilliant  and  autobio- 
graphical. All  the  same,  a  prize  should  be 
offered  to  anybody  who  can  find  the  missing 
"  risk  "  in  mentioning  to  another  a  point  on 
which  both  are  agreed. 

She  adds  that  she  has  had  "  a  long  ex- 
perience of  inner  circles."  There,  r£  must  be 
admitted,  she  is  ahead  of  me.  But  the  only 
inner  circle  of  which  I  have  had  a  long  ex- 
perience has  been  much  improved  since  it 
was  electrified. 

In  congratulating  Peter  upon  a  new  ap- 
pointment, with  three  under  him,  I  asked 
when  I  first  met  him.  His  reply  was  particu- 
larly staunch,  and  I  quote  from  it : 

"  It  was  in  May  28,  1913.  The  hour  was 
1.38.5  Greenwich  Time,  and  I  shall  never 
forget  it.  You  were  sixteen  then,  and  the 
effect  as  you  came  into  the  room  was  quint- 
essential. Suddenly  the  sunlight  blazed,  the 
electric  light  went  on  automatically  till  the 
fuses  gave  way,  the  chimney  caught  fire,  the 


THE   SOLES  49 

roof  fell  in,  the  petrol  tank  exploded,  old 
R — y  said  that  he  should  never  care  to  speak 
to  his  wife  again,  and  the  butler  dropped  the 
Veuve  Clicquot.  After  that  the  shooting 
party  came  in,  but  for  some  reason  or  other 
the  sentence  was  not  carried  out." 

I  have  very  few  staunch  friends,  and  many 
of  them  have  had  to  be  discarded  from  weak- 
ness ;  but  when  they  are  staunch — well,  they 
really  are.  The  only  trouble  with  Peter 
Cochin  was  that  he  was  too  cautious.  He 
was  given  to  under-statement.  I  do  not 
think  he  gives  a  really  full  and  rich  idea  of  the 
effect  I  habitually  produced. 

I  sometimes  think  that  I  am  almost  too 
effective.  Still,  as  I  said  before,  the  Latin 
word  "  margo  "  does  mean  "  the  limit." 


FIFTH  EXTRACT 
MISFIRES 

MY  family  had  a  curious  dread  that  I  should 
marry  a  groom.  I  never  did.  To  be  quite 
honest,  I  never  had  the  opportunity.  But 
I  did  get  engaged  to  quite  a  lot  of  other 
things. 

My  first  engagement  was  when  I  was  very, 
very  young.  He  was  a  humorous  man,  and 
perhaps  I  was  wrong  in  taking  him  so  seriously. 
Still,  he  must  have  adored  me.  When  I 
accepted  him  his  hair  turned  completely  white 
— an  infallible  test  of  the  depth  of  emotion. 

He  was  an  excellent  whip.  It  used  to  be 
a  wonderful  sight  to  see  him  taking  a  pair  of 
young  horses  down  Ludgate  Hill  on  a  greasy 
day  at  noon,  with  the  whole  road  chock-a- 
block  with  traffic,  lighting  a  pipe  with  a  wooden 
match  with  one  hand,  carrying  on  an  animated 
conversation  with  the  other  with  a  fare  on 
the  front  seat,  dropping  white-hot  satire  on 
the  heads  of  drivers  less  efficient  than  himself, 
and  always  getting  the  'bus  through  safely 
with  about  an  inch  to  spare  on  each  side. 

On  the  other  hand,  he  was  almost  entirely 
ignorant  of  Marcus  Aurelius,  Henry  James, 
Step-dancing,  Titian,  the  Manners  and  Cus- 
toms of  Polite  Society,  Factory-Girl-  Reclama- 
tion, Cardinal  Newman,  or  the  Art  of  Self- 

50 


MISFIRES  51 

advertisement.  He  said,  with  an  entire  ab- 
sence of  pretension,  that  these  things  were  not 
on  his  route. 

When  I  announced  our  engagement  the 
members  of  my  family  who  were  present, 
about  seventeen  of  them,  all  swooned,  except 
dear  papa,  who  said  in  his  highly-strung  way 
that  if  I  married  anybody  he  would  put  the 
R.S.P.C.A.  on  to  me. 

I  said  what  I  thought,  and  fled  for  conso- 
lation to  Casey,  my  married  sister.  But  she 
also  was  discouraging. 

"  Marge,"  she  said,  "  give  it  a  miss.  You 
have  a  rich  nature,  beautiful  hair,  a  know- 
ledge of  the  world,  nervous  tension,  some  of 
the  appearance  of  education,  and  four  pound 
fifteen  put  by  in  the  Post  Office.  You  must 
look  higher." 

I  have  always  detested  scenes — which, 
perhaps,  seems  strange  in  a  girl  as  fond  of  the 
limelight  as  I  was.  I  began  to  re-consider 
the  question.  Accidentally,  I  discovered  that 
he  had  a  wife  already.  What  with  one  thing 
and  another,  I  thought  it  best  to  write  and 
give  him  up.  He  immediately  resigned  his 
appointment  with  the  London  General,  gave 
me  a  long-priced  certainty  for  the  Oaks,  and 
left  for  New  York.  When  he  returned,  two 
years  later,  his  hair  was  pale  green. 

But  if  the  engagement  did  not  come  off, 
the  certainty  for  the  Oaks  did.  In  conse- 
quence of  this  I  left  for  Ramsgate  by  the 
"  Marguerite  "  some  days  later.  Dressed  ? 
Well,  you  should  have  seen  me. 


52  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

It  chanced  that  one  of  the  passengers  on 
the  boat  was  Mr.  Aaron  Birsch.  He  had  been 
presented  to  me  some  weeks  before  by  Mr. 
Bunting.  I  knew  that  he  was  a  turf  com 
missioner,  had  speculated  with  success  in 
cottage  property,  and  was  commonly  reported 
to  be  much  richer  than  he  looked.  Beyond 
that,  I  know  very  little  of  him.  Apparently, 
however,  he  had  made  it  his  business  to  know 
quite  a  good  deal  of  me.  Mr.  Bunting  was 
his  informant,  and  I  had  always  been  a  quite 
special  favourite  of  the  doyen  of  the  Soles. 

Mr.  Birsch  came  up  to  me  at  once.  We 
chatted  on  various  topics,  and  he  told  me  of 
something  which  was  likely  to  be  quite  use- 
ful fop  Goodwood.  Then  he  said  suddenly : 

"  Matter  of  fact,  there  was  a  bit  of  private 
business  I  wanted  a  word  with  you  about. 
This  boat's  too  full  of  what  I  call  riff-raff. 
Mouth-organs.  Bad  taste.  Can't  hear  your- 
self speak.  But  we  get  an  hour  at  Ramsgate, 
and  if  you'll  take  a  snack  with  me  there,  I 
can  tell  you  what  I've  got  to  say." 

More  from  curiosity  than  from  anything 
else,  I  accepted.  And  I  must  say  that  our 
luncheon  conversation  was  rather  remark- 
able. 

BIRSCH  :  To  come  to  the  point,  you're  the 
very  identical  girl  that  I  want  Alfred  to 
marry. 

MARGE  (innocently) :  Alfred  ? 

BIRSCH  :  Yes,  my  son. 

MARGE  :  But  I  have  never  even  seen  him. 

BIRSCH  :  And  when  you  have  you'll  pro- 


MISFIRES  58 

bably  wish  you  hadn't.  But  don't  let  that 
prejudice  you.  It's  the  inside  of  the  head 
that  counts.  That  boy's  got  a  perfect  genius 
for  cottage  property  and  real  tact  with  it. 
Only  last  week  he  raised  an  old  woman's  rent 
a  shilling  a  week,  and  when  he  left  she  gave 
him  a  rosebud  and  said  she'd  pray  for  him. 
It  takes  some  doing — a  thing  like  that.  -Now, 
I  want  a  public  career  for  that  boy,  and  if  he 
marries  you  he  can't  miss  it.  Do  you  know 
what  Mr.  Bunting  said  to  me  about  you  ? 

MAKGE  (breathlessly) :  But  he's  so  flattering. 
I  think  he  likes  me — I  don't  know  why.  I 
sometimes  wonder 

BIRSCH  (just  as  if  I'd  never  spoken) :  Bunting 
said  to  me  :  "  That  girl,  Marge,  will  get  into 
the  newspapers.  It  may  be  in  the  Court 
News,  and  it  may  be  in  the  Police-court 
News.  That  will  depend  on  which  she  pre- 
fers. But  she'll  get  there,  and  she'll  stick 
there !  That's  what  I  want  for  Alfred. 
Everything's  ready  for  him  to  start  firing, 
but  he  needs  you  to  sight  the  gun. 

MARGE  :  And  if  you  can't  get  me,  whom 
would  you  like  ? 

BIRSCH  :  Well,  Lady  Artemis  Morals  has 
some  gift  for  publicity.  But  Alfred  won't 
marry  a  title — say's  he  rather  thinks  of 
making  a  title  for  himself.  The  boy's  got 
ambition.  The  cash  is  forthcoming.  And 
you  can  do  the  rest. 

MARGE  :  It  is  a  flattering  offer.  You'll 
let  me  think  over  it  ? 

He  kindly  consented,  and  we  returned  to 


54  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

the  boat.  However,  on  the  way  back  the 
sea  became  very  rough  and  unpleasant ;  and 
I  threw  up  the  idea. 

(By  the  way,  you  don't  mind  me  writing 
the  dialogue,  as  above,  just  as  if  it  were  a 
piece  out  of  a  play  ?  I've  always  brought  the 
sense  of  the  theatre  into  real  life.) 

Poor  Aaron  Birsch  !  He  was  only  one  of 
the  very  many  men  who  have  been  extremely 
anxious  that  I  should  marry  somebody  else. 
Two  years  later  Alfred  died  of  cerebral 
tumescence — a  disease  to  which  the  ambitious 
are  peculiarly  liable.  That  cat,  Millie  Wyan- 
dotte,  happened  to  say  to  Birsch  that  if  I  had 
married  his  son  I  should  now  have  been  a 
wealthy  young  widow, 

"  Anybody  who  married  Marge,"  said 
Birsch,  "  would  not  die  at  the  end  of  two 
years." 

"  I  suppose  not,"  said  Millie.  "  He'd  be 
more  likely  to  commit  suicide  at  the  end  of 
one," 

I  never  did  like  that  girl. 

But  I  must  speak  now  of  what  was  perhaps 
my  most  serious  engagement.  Hugo  Broke — 
his  mother  was  one  of  the  Stoneys — was 
intended  from  birth  for  one  of  the  services 
and  selected  domestic  service.  Here  it  was 
thought  that  his  height — he  was  seven  foot 
one — would  tell  in  his  favour.  However,  the 
Duchess  of  Exminster,  in  ordering  that  the 
new  footman  should  be  dismissed,  said  that 
height  was  desirable,  but  that  this  was  pro- 
lixity. 


MISFIRES  55 

However,  it  was  not  long  before  he  found  a 
congenial  sphere  for  his  activities  with  the 
London  branch  of  the  Auto-extensor  Co.  of 
America.  The  Auto-extensor  Co.  addresses 
itself  to  the  abbreviated  editions  of  humanity. 
It  is  claimed  for  the  Auto-extensor  system  that 
there  is  absolutely  no  limit  to  the  increase  in 
height  which  may  be  obtained  by  it,  provided 
of  course,  that  the  system  is  followed  exactly, 
that  nothing  happens  to  prevent  it,  and  that 
the  rain  keeps  off. 

Hugo  walked  into  the  Regent  Street  estab- 
lishment of  the  Auto-extensor  people,  and 
said  : 

"  Good  morning.  I  think  I  could  be  of 
some  service  to  this  company  as  an  adver- 
tisement." 

"  I  am  sure  you  could,"  said  the  manager. 
"  If  you  will  kindly  wait  a  moment  while  the 
boy  fetches  the  step-ladder  I  will  come  up 
and  arrange  terms." 

In  the  result,  the  large  window  of  the 
Regent  Street  establishment  was  furnished  as 
a  club  smoking-room  or  thereabouts.  In  the 
very  centre,  in  a  chair  of  exaggerated  comfort 
but  doubtful  taste,  sat  Hugo.  He  was  ex- 
quisitely attired.  He  read  a  newspaper  and 
smoked  cigarettes.  By  his  side,  in  a  magnifi- 
cent frame,  was  a  printed  notice,  giving  a 
rather  fanciful  biography  of  the  exhibit. 

"  This  gentleman,"  the  notice  ran,  "  was 
once  a  dwarf.  For  years  he  suffered  in  conse- 
quence agonies  of  humiliation,  and  then  a 
friend  called  his  attention  to  the  Auto-extensor 


56  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

System  of  increasing  height.  He  did  not  have 
much  faith  in  it,  bu4:  in  desperation  he  gave 
it  a  trial — and  it  made  him  what  he  now  is. 
Look  for  yourselves.  Facts  speak  louder 
than  words.  All  we  ask  you  to  do  is  to  trust 
the  evidence  of  your  own  eyes." 

The  window  proved  a  great  attraction.  The 
crowd  before  it  was  most  numerous  about 
four  o'clock,  because  every  day  at  that  hour 
a  dramatic  and  exciting  scene  was  witnessed. 
Putting  down  his  newspaper,  Hugo  struck  a 
bell  on  a  little  table  by  his  side.  A  page 
entered  through  the  excessively  plush  curtains 
at  the  back,  and  Hugo  gave  a  brief  and 
haughty  order.  The  boy  somewhat  over- 
acted respectful  acquiescence,  retired  through 
the  curtains,  and  reappeared  again  with  tea 
and  thin  bread  and  butter.  Of  these  delicacies 
Hugo  partook  coram  populo.  This  carried 
conviction  with  it.  One  onlooker  would  say 
to  another  :  "  Shows  you  he's  real,  don't  it  ? 
At  one  time  I  thought  it  was  only  a  dummy." 
And  for  some  time  afterwards  the  assistant 
in  the  shop  would  be  kept  busy,  handing  out 
the  gratis  explanatory  booklet  of  the  Auto- 
extensor  Co. 

It  was  in  this  window  that  I  first  saw  Hugo. 
I  arrived  a  little  late  that  afternoon,  and 
missed  the  first  act,  where  he  puts  down  the 
newspaper  and  rings  the  bell.  But  I  saw  the 
conclusion  of  the  piece. 

My  eyes  filled  with  tears.  Here — here  at 
last — I  had  met  somebody  whose  chilled- 


MISFIRES  57 

steel  endurance  of  publicity  equalled,  and 
perhaps  exceeded,  my  own. 

I  entered  the  shop,  procured  the  explana- 
tory booklet,  and  asked  at  what  hour  they 
closed.  At  that  hour  I  met  him  as  he  left 
business,  and  my  first  feelings  were  of  dis- 
appointment. His  clothes  were  not  the  ex- 
quisite raiment  that  he  had  worn  as  an  exhibit 
in  the  window.  The  white  spats,  the  sponge- 
bag  trousers  with  the  knife-edge  crease,  the 
gold-rimmed  eye-glass,  the  well-cut  morning 
coat,  the  too  assertive  waistcoat — all  were  the 
property  of  the  Auto-extensor  Co.  and  not  to 
be  worn  out  of  business  hours.  He  now  wore 
a  shabby  tweed  suit  and  a  cap.  But  he  was 
still  a  noticeable  figure ;  a  happy  smile  came 
Into  the  faces  of  little  boys  as  he  went  past. 

"  Like  your  job  ?  "  I  said  shyly,  as  I  took 
the  seat  next  to  him  on  the  top  of  the  omnibus. 

He  replied  rather  gruffly  that  he  supposed 
a  bloke  had  to  work  for  his  living,  and  all 
work  was  work,  whatever  way  you  looked  at 
it.  Further  questions  elicited  that  the  pay 
was  satisfactory,  but  that  he  did  not  regard 
the  situation  as  permanent.  The  public 
would  get  tired  of  it  and  some  other  form  of 
advertisement  would  be  found.  He  com- 
plained, too,  that  he  was  supposed  to  keep 
up  the  appearance  of  a  wealthy  toff  smoking 
cigarettes  continually  for  a  period  of  seven 
hours,  and  the  management  provided  only  one 
small  packet  of  woodbines  per  diem  for  him 
to  do  it  on. 

I  produced  my  cigarette-case.    It  was  one 


58  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

which  Lord  Baringstoke — always  a  careless 
man — had  lost.  It  had  been  presented  to  me 
by  dear  Mr.  Bunting.  Hugo  said  he  had  not 
intended  anything  of  that  sort,  but  helped 
himself. 

A  quarter  of  an  hour  later  we  had  our  first 
quarrel.  I  asked  him  if  it  was  cold  up  where 
he  was.  He  said  morosely  that  he  had  heard 
that  joke  on  his  stature  a  few  times  before. 
I  told  him  that  if  he  lived  long  enough — and 
I'd  never  seen  anybody  living  much  longer — 
he  was  likely  to  hear  it  a  few  times  again. 
He  then  said  that  either  I  could  hop  off  the 
'bus  or  he  would,  and  he  didn't  care  which. 
After  that  we  both  were  rather  rude.  He  got 
me  by  the  hair,  and  I  had  just  landed  a 
straight  left  to  the  point  when  the  conductor 
came  up  and  said  he  would  not  have  it. 

I  became  engaged  to  Hugo  that  night  at 
10.41.  I  remember  the  time  exactly,  because 
Mrs.  Pettifer  had  a  rule  that  all  her  maids 
were  to  be  in  the  house  by  ten  sharp,  and  I 
was  rather  keeping  an  eye  on  my  watch  in 
consequence. 

To  tell  the  truth,  we  quarrelled  very  fre- 
quently. Different  though  we  were  in  many 
respects,  we  both  had  irritable,  overstrung, 
tri-chord  natures,  with  hair-spring  nerves 
connected  direct  to  the  high-explosive  lan- 
guage-mine. 

One  one  occasion  I  went  with  him  to  a 
paper  fancy -dress  dance  at  the  rooms  attached 
to  the  Hopley  Arms.  I  went  as  "  The  Sun- 
day Times,"  my  dress  being  composed  of  two 


MISFIRES  59 

copies  of  that  excellent,  though  inexpensive 
journal,  tastefully  arranged  on  a  concrete 
foundation. 

When  Millie  Wyandotte  saw  me,  she  called 
out :  "  Hello,  Marge  !  Got  into  the  news- 
papers at  last  ?  "  I  shall  be  even  with  that 
girl  one  of  these  days. 

I  declined  to  dance  with  Hugo  at  all.  I 
said  frankly  that  I  preferred  to  dance  with 
somebody  who  could  touch  the  top  of  my 
head  without  stooping.  I  went  off  with 
Georgie  Leghorn,  and  Hugo  sat  and  sulked. 

Later  in  the  evening  he  came  up  to  me 
and  asked  if  he  should  get  my  cloak. 

I  said  irritably :  "Of  course  not.  Why 
should  you  ?  " 

"  Well,"  he  said,  "  I  don't  know  whether 
you're  aware  of  it,  but  you've  got  three  split 
infinitives  in  your  City  article." 

"  Ah  !  "  I  replied.  "  The  next  time  Millie 
Wyandotte  telephones  up  to  your  head,  give 
her  my  love  and  tell  her  not  to  over-strain 
herself." 

Things  went  from  bad  to  worse,  and  after 
he  had  alluded  to  my  backbone  as  my  Per- 
sonal Column,  any  possibility  of  reconcilia- 
tion seemed  at  an  end.  I  did  not  know  then 
what  a  terribly  determined  person  Hugo  was. 

Georgie  Leghorn  saw  me  home.  I  parted 
with  him  at  the  house,  let  myself  in  by  the 
area-gate,  locking  it  after  me,  and  so  down 
the  steps  and  into  the  kitchen. 

There  I  had  just  taken  off  my  hair  when  I 
heard  a  shrill  whistle  in  the  street  outside. 


60  MARGE   ASKINFORIT 

Hurriedly  replacing  my  only  beauty,  I  drew 
up  the  blind  and  looked  out.  There,  up  above 
me  on  the  pavement,  was  Hugo,  stretching 
away  into  the  distance. 

"  Called  for  the  reconciliation,"  he  said. 
"  Just  open  this  area  gate,  will  you  ?  " 

"  At  this  time  of  night  ?  "  I  called,  in  a  tense 
whisper.  "  Certainly  not." 

He  stepped  back,  and  in  one  leap  jumped 
over  the  area-railings  and  down  on  to  the 
window-sill  of  the  kitchen.  The  next  moment 
he  had  flung  the  window  up,  entered,  and 
stood  beside  me. 

"  What  do  you  think  of  that  ?  "  he  said 
calmly. 

"  Hugo,"  I  said,  "  I've  known  some 
bounders  in  my  time,  but  not  one  who  could 
have  done  that." 

We  sat  down  and  began  discussing  the 
Disestablishment  of  the  Welsh  Church,  when 
suddenly  the  area-gate  was  rattled  and  a 
stern  voice  outside  said  "  Police." 

Instantly,  Hugo  concealed  as  much  of 
himself  as  he  could  under  the  kitchen  table. 
There  was  no  help  for  it.  I  had  to  let  the 
policeman  in,  or  he  would  have  roused  the 
household. 

"  I'm  just  going  to  have  a  look  hi  your 
kitchen,"  he  said. 

"  No  use,"  I  replied.  "  The  rabbit-pie  was 
finished  yesterday." 

"  Saucy  puss,  ain't  you  ?  "  he  said,  as  he 
entered. 


MISFIRES  61 

*'  Well,  you  might  be  a  sport  and  tell  a  girl 
what  you're  after." 

"  Cabman,  driving  past  here  a  few  minutes 
ago,  saw  a  man  jump  the  area  railings  and 
make  a  burglarious  entry  by  the  kitchen 
window." 

"  Is  that  all  ?  "  I  said.  "  A  man  did  enter 
that  way  a  few  minutes  ago,  but  it  was  not  a 
burglar.  It  was  Master  Edward,  Mrs.  Petti- 
fer's  eldest  son.  He'd  lost  his  latch-key — 
he's  always  doing  it — and  that's  how  it  hap- 
pened. He  went  straight  upstairs  to  bed,  or 
he'd  confirm  what  I  say." 

"  Went  straight  up  to  bed,  did  he  ?  Did 
he  take  his  legs  off  first  ?  I  notice  there's  a 
pair  of  them  sticking  out  from  under  the 
kitchen  table." 

"  Yes,"  I  admitted,  "  I've  told  better  lies 
in  my  time.  Oh,  Mr.  Policeman,  don't  be 
hard.  I  never  wanted  my  young  man  to 
come  larking  about  like  this.  But — he's  not 
a  burglar.  He's  the  exhibit  from  the  Auto- 
extensor  Co.'s  in  Regent  Street.  You  can 
pull  out  the  rest  of  him  and  see  if  he  isn't." 

"  That's  what  I  told  the  cabman,"  said  the 
policeman.  "  I  said  to  him  :  '  You  juggins,' 
I  said,  '  do  you  think  a  burglar  who  wants  to 
get  into  a  house  waits  till  a  cab's  going  past 
and  then  gives  a  acrobatic  exhibition  to  at- 
tract the  driver's  attention  ?  That's  some 
young  fool  after  one  of  the  maids.'  No,  I 
don't  want  to  see  the  rest  of  the  young  man — 
not  if  he's  like  the  sample.  Get  him  unwound 
as  soon  as  you  can,  and  send  him  about  his 


62  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

business.  If  he's  not  out  in  two  minutes,  I 
shall  ring  the  front  door,  and  you'll  be  in  the 
cart.  And  don't  act  so  silly  another  time." 

Hugo  was  out  in  1  min.  35sec.  He  stopped 
to  chat  with  the  policeman,  jumped  the  seven- 
foot  railings  into  the  square  garden,  and 
jumped  back  again,  just  to  show  what  he 
could  do,  and  went  off. 

I  gave  a  long,  deep  sigh.  I  always  do  that 
when  an  incident  in  my  life  fails  to  reach  the 
best  autobiographical  level.  I  neither  knew 
nor  cared  what  the  policeman  thought.  You 
see,  I  would  never  deserve  a  bad  reputation, 
but  there's  nothing  else  I  wouldn't  do  to  get 
one. 

For  eighty-four  years — my  memory  for 
numbers  is  not  absolutely  accurate,  but  we 
will  say  eighty-four — for  eighty-four  years  I 
wrote  him  a  letter  every  morning  and  evening 
of  every  day,  with  the  exception  of  Sundays, 
bank  holidays,  and  the  days  when  I  did  not 
feel  like  it. 

But  it  was  not  to  be.  He  was  not  without 
success  in  the  circus  which  he  subsequently 
joined,  but  he  was  improvident.  His  income 
increased  in  arithmetical  progression,  and  his 
expenditure  in  geometrical.  This,  as  Dr. 
Micawber  and  Professor  Malthus  have  shown 
us,  must  end  in  disaster.  Looking  at  it  from 
the  noblest  point  of  view — the  autobiographi- 
cal— I  saw  that  a  marriage  with  Hugo  would 
inevitably  cramp  my  style. 

And  so  the  great  sacrifice  was  made.  Our 
feelings  were  so  intense  as  we  said  farewell 


MISFIRES  63 

that  my  native  reserve  and  reticence  forbid 
me  to  describe  them.  But  we  parted  one 
night  in  June,  with  a  tear  in  the  throat  and  a 
catch  in  the  eye.  As  he  strode  from  the  park, 
I  looked  upward  and  saw  in  the  brown  crags 
above  me  some  graceful  animal  silhouetted 
against  an  opal  sky.  I  always  have  said  that 
those  Mappin  Terraces  were  an  improve- 
ment. 


SIXTH  EXTRACT 
TESTIMONIALS — ROYAL  APPRECIATION 

BEING  what  I  am,  it  may  readily  be  supposed 
that  I  have  received  many  tributes  to  the 
qualities  that  I  possess.  I  have  already  ex- 
posed many  of  these  to  the  public  gaze, 
still  have  some  left,  and  it  seems  to  me  a  pity 
that  my  readers  should  miss  any  of  the  evi- 
dence. The  first  testimonial  is  from  my 
sister  Casey,  and  a  melancholy  interest  is 
attached  to  it.  It  was  the  last  one  she  wrote 
for  me  before  I  took  the  momentous  step 
which  will  be  described  in  my  last  chapter  : 

"  Marge  Askinforit  has  been  in  my  service 
for  eight  years.  I  should  not  be  parting  with 
her  but  for  the  fact  that  I  am  compelled  by 
reasons  of  health  to  leave  England.  Askin- 
forit is  clean,  sober,  honest,  an  early  riser,  an 
excellent  plate-cleaner  and  valet,  has  perfect 
manners  and  high  intelligence,  takes  a  great 
pride  in  her  work,  and  is  most  willing,  obliging 
and  industrious.  She  was.  with  me  as  parlour- 
maid (first  of  two),  and  now  seeks  temporary 
employment  in  that  capacity  ;  but  there  is  no 
branch  of  domestic  service  with  which  she  is 
not  thoroughly  well  acquainted,  and  when 
the  occasion  has  arisen  she  has  always  been 
willing  to  undertake  any  duties,  and  has 
done  so  with  unfailing  success.  She  is  tall,  of 
64 


TESTIMONIALS  65 

good  appearance,  Church  of  England  (or  any- 
thing else  that  is  required),  and  anybody  who 
secures  such  a  treasure  will  be  exceptionally 
fortunate.  I  shall  be  pleased  at  any  time  to 
give  any  further  information  that  may  be 
desired. 

(Mrs.)    C.    MORGENSTEIN." 

I  do  not  say  that  dear  Casey's  estimate 
had  the  arid  accuracy  of  the  pedant,  but  she 
had  a  rich  and  helpful  imagination.  In  rare 
moments  of  depression  and  unhappiness  I 
have  found  that  by  reading  one  of  her  testi- 
monials I  can  always  recover  my  tone.  And 
they  were  effective  for  their  purpose.  By 
this  time  I  was  accepting  no  situations  except 
with  titled  people  ;  and  some  of  the  language 
that  I  heard  used  suggested  to  me  that  th« 
reclamation  of  baronets  during  their  dinner- 
hour  might  after  all  be  my  life's  work. 

The  next  exhibit  will  be  a  letter  from  a 
famous  author,  a  complete  stranger  to  me, 
whose  work  I  had  long  known  and  admired  : 

"  Dear  Madam,  For  a  long  time  past  it  has 
been  my  privilege  to  express  in  the  daily 
newspapers  my  keen  and  heartfelt  apprecia- 
tion of  a  certain  departmental  store.  I 
thought  that  I  knew  my  work.  I  believe 
even  that  it  gave  satisfaction.  I  could  begin 
an  article  with  fragments  of  moral  philosophy, 
easily  intelligible  and  certain  of  general 
acceptance,  modulate  with  consummate  skill 
into  the  key  of  crepe  de  chine,  and  with  a 
further  natural  and  easy  transition  reach  the 
grand  theme  of  the  glorious  opportunities 

K 


06  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

offered  by  a  philanthropical  Oxford  Street  to 
a  gasping  and  excited  public.  Or  I  would 
adopt  with  grace  and  facility  the  attitude  of 
a  prejudiced  and  hostile  critic,  show  how  cold 
facts  and  indisputable  figures  reversed  my 
judgment,  and  end  with  a  life-like  picture 
of  myself  heading  frantically  in  a  No.  16  'bus 
for  the  bargain  basement,  haunted  by  the 
terror  that  I  might  be  too  late.  With  what 
dignity — even  majesty — did  I  not  invest  an 
ordinary  transaction  in  lingerie,  when  I  spoke 
of  '  the  policy  of  this  great  House  '  1  Yes,  I 
believed  I  knew  what  there  was  to  know  of 
the  supreme  art  of  writing  an  advertisement. 

"  But  now  the  mists  roll  away  and  I  see 
a«  it  were  remote  peaks  of  delicate  and  impli- 
cating advertising  the  existence  of  which  I 
had  never  suspected.  It  is  to  you  I  owe  it. 
You  have  a  theme  that  you  probably  find 
inexhaustible.  Fired  by  your  example  I 
shall  turn  to  my  own  subject  (Government 
linen  at  the  moment)  with  a  happy  conscious- 
ness that  I  shall  do  a  far,  far  better  thing 
than  I  have  ever  done  before. 

Your  obedient  servant, 

C  ALLISTHENIDES . " 

Of  this  letter  I  will  only  say  that  few  have 
the  courage  and  candour  to  acknowledge  an 
inferiority  and  an  indebtedness,  and  fewer 
still  could  have  done  it  in  the  viscious  and 
even  succulent  style  of  the  above.  It  is  a 
letter  that  I  read  often  and  value  highly. 
The  only  trouble  about  it  is  that  I  sometimes 


TESTIMONIALS  67 

wonder  if  it  was  not  really  intended  for  another 
lady  whose  name  has  one  or  two  points  of 
similarity  with  my  own. 

I  cannot  refrain  from  quoting  also  one  of 
the  many  letters  that  I  received  from  my 
dear  old  friend,  Mr.  J.  A.  Bunting  : 

"  And  now  I  must  turn  to  your  request  for 
a  statement  of  my  opinion  of  you,  to  be  pub- 
lished in  case  an  autobiography  should  set 
in.  It  was  I  who  introduced  you  to  a  certain 
circle.  That  circle,  though  to  me  an  open 
sessimy,  was  no  doubt  particular,  and  I 
confess  that  I  felt  some  hesitation.  Through 
no  fault  of  your  own,  you  were  at  that  time 
in  a  position  which  was  hardly  up  to  our 
level.  But  I  admired  your  spirit  and  thought 
your  manners,  of  which  I  can  claim  to  be  a 
good  judge,  had  the  correct  cashy,  though 
with  rather  too  much  tendency  to  back-chat. 
At  any  rate,  I  took  the  step,  and  I  have  never 
regretted  it.  You  soon  made  your  way  to 
the  front,  and  it  is  my  firm  belief  that  if  you 
had  been  dropped  into  a  den  of  raging  lions 
you  would  have  done  the  same  thing.  You 
are  much  missed.  You  have  my  full  permis- 
sion to  make  what  use  you  please  of  this 
testimonial,  which  is  quite  unsolicited,  and 
actuated  solely  by  an  appreciation  of  the 
goods  supplied. 

"  Society  in  London  is  very  so-so  at  present, 
and  we  leave  for  Scotland  at  the  end  of  the 
week.  His  lordship's  had  one  fit  of  his 
tantrums,  but  I  had  a  look  in  my  eye  that 
ipsum  factum  soon  put  an  end  to  it.  I  wish 


68  MARCH   ASKINFORIT 

it  was  as  easy  to  put  a  stop  to  his  leaning  to 
third-class  company.  Three  ordinary M. P. 's 
at  dinner  last  night  and  one  R.A.  I  always 
did  hate  riff-raff,  and  should  say  it  was  in 
my  blood." 

Unfortunately,  it  is  not  everybody  who 
will  put  into  writing,  with  the  simple  manliness 
of  Mr.  Bunting,  the  very  high  opinion  of  me 
which  they  must  inevitably  have  formed. 
Even  George  Leghorn  has  proved  a  dis- 
appointment. But  in  his  case  I  am  inclined 
to  think  there  was  a  misunderstanding. 

I  asked  him  to  send  his  opinion  of  me  as  I 
thought  of  making  a  book.  He  replied  on  a 
postcard  :  "  Don't  approve  of  women  in  the 
profession,  and  you'd  better  cut  it  out.  It's 
hard  enough  for  a  man  bookmaker  to  scrape 
a  living,  with  everybody  expecting  the  absurd 
prices  quoted  in  the  press." 

Many  of  the  contemporary  testimonials 
that  I  have  received  are  so  cautiously  framed 
and  so  wanting  in  warmth  that  I  decline  to 
make  any  use  of  them.  I  have  always  hated 
cowardice.  I  have  the  courage  of  my  opinions. 
Why  cannot  others  have  the  same. 

However,  I  have  through  my  sister  Chlorine 
succeeded  in  securing  the  opinions  of  some  of 
the  greatest  in  another  century.  I  can  only 
say  that  they  confirm  my  belief  in  her  powers 
as  a  medium,  and  in  her  wonderful  system  of 
wireless  telephony. 

The  first  person  that  I  asked  her  to  ring  up 
was  Napoleon.  She  had  some  difficulty  in 
getting  through.  He  spoke  as  follows  : 


TESTIMONIALS  69 

"  Yes,  I  am  Napoleon.  Oh,  that's  you, 

Chlorine,  is  it  ? Quite  well, 

thank  you,  but  find  the  heat  rather  oppres- 
sive  You  want  my  opinion  of 

your  sister  Marge  ?  She  is  wonderful — 
wonderful !  Tell  her  from  me  that  if  I  had 
but  married  her  when  I  was  a  young  man,  I 
am  confident  that  Wellington  would  have 
met  his  Waterloo." 

I  think  he  would  have  liked  to  say  more, 
but  unfortunately  the  receiver  fused.  I  think 
it  showed  such  nice  feeling  in  him  that  he 
spoke  English.  Poor  Chlorine  knows  no 
French. 

After  the  apparatus  had  been  repaired, 
Chlorine  got  into  communication  with  Sir 
Joshua  Reynolds.  She  said  that  his  voice 
had  a  fruity  ceremoniousness,  and  I  wish  I 
could  have  heard  it.  But  I  have  not  Chlorine's 
gift  of  mediumship.  Sir  Joshua  said  : 

"  The  more  I  see  of  your  sister  Marge,  the 
more  I  regret  the  time  that  I  spent  on  Mrs. 
Siddons,  who  was  also  theatrical ;  my  compli- 
ment that  I  should  go  down  to  posterity  on 
the  hem  of  her  garment  was  not  ill-turned, 
but  she  is  more  likely  to  go  down  to  posterity 
as  the  subject  of  my  art.  Why,  even  Romney 
would  have  been  good  enough  for  her.  Could 
I  but  have  painted  Marge,  my  fame  had  been 
indeed  immortal.  Who's  President?  .  .  . 
Well,  you  surprise  me." 

To  prevent  any  possibility  of  incredulity, 
I  may  add  that  I  wrote  those  words  down  at 
the  tune,  added  the  date  and  address,  and 


70  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

signed  them  ;  so  there  can  be  no  mistake. 

But  far  more  interesting  is  the  important 
and  exclusive  communication  which  Chlorine 
next  received.  It  was  only  after  much  per- 
suasion that  I  got  her  to  ring  him  up  ;  she 
said  it  was  contrary  to  etiquette.  However, 
she  at  last  put  through  a  call  to  Sir  Herbert 
Taylor,  who  kindly  arranged  the  matter  for 
us. 

He — not  Sir  Herbert — showed  the  greatest 
readiness  to  converse.  Chlorine  says  that  he 
spoke  in  a  quick  staccato.  He  was  certainly 
voluble,  and  this  is  what  he  said  : 

"  What,  what,  what  ?  Want  my  opinion 
of  marriage,  do  you,  Miss  Forget-your-name  ? 
I  had  a  long  experience  of  it.  Estimable 
woman,  Charlotte,  very  estimable,  and  made 
a  good  mother,  though  she  showed  partiality. 
If  I'd  had  my  own  way  though — between 
ourselves,  what,  what  ? — I  should  have  pre- 
ferred Sarah.  More  lively,  more  entertain- 
ing. Holland  would  have  been  pleased.  But 
it  couldn't  be  done.  Monarchs  are  the  ser- 
vants of  ministers  now.  Never  admitted 
that  doctrine  myself.  Kicked  against  it  all 
my  life.  Ah,  if  North  had  been  the  strong 
man  I  was !  But  as  to  marriage  .  .  . 

"  What,  what  ?  You  said  '  Marge  ' — not 
*  marriage  ' — your  sister  Marge  ?  You  should 
speak  more  clearly.  Get  nearer  the  receiver 
— age  plays  havoc  with  the  hearing.  Fine 
woman,  Marge,  and  you  can  tell  her  I  said  so. 
Great  spirit.  Plenty  of  courage.  Always 
admired  courage.  If  I  were  a  young  man 


Tl 

and  back  on  earth  again,  I  might  do  worse, 
what,  what  ?  " 

And  then  I  am  sorry  to  say  he  changed  the 
subject  abruptly.  He  went  on  : 

"  What's  this  about  King  Edward  pota- 
toes ?  Stuff  and  nonsense  !  I  knew  all  about 
potatoes.  Grew  them  at  Windsor.  Kew  too. 
Wrote  an  article  about  them.  Why  can't 
they  name  a  potato  after  me  ?  What  ?  " 

Here  Chlorine  interposed  :  "  Do  you  wish 
for  another  three  minutes,  sir,  or  have  you 
finished  ?  " 

I  hoped  he  would  say,  "  Don't  cut  us 
off,"  but,  possibly  from  habits  of  economy,  he 
did  not.  I  have  not  given  his  name,  for  fear 
of  being  thought  indiscreet,  but  possibly  those 
who  are  deeply  read  in  history  may  guess  it. 

It  is  the  greatest  tribute  but  one  that  I 
have  ever  received,  and  I  think  brings  me 
very  nearly  up  to  the  level  of  my  Great 
Example.  If  I  could  only  feel  that  for  once 
I  had  done  that,  I  could  fold  my  little  hands 
and  be  content. 

But  it  is  not  quite  the  greatest  tribute  of 
all.  The  greatest  is  my  own  self-estimate  of 
me  myself.  It  demands  and  shall  receive  a 
chapter  all  to  itself.  Wipe  your  feet,  take  off 
your  hat,  assume  a  Sunday  expression,  and 
enter  upon  it  reverently. 

After  all,  the  gift  of  seeing  ourselves  as 
others  see  us  is  not  to  be  desired.  In  your 
case  for  certain  it  would  cause  you  the  most 
intense  depression.  Even  in  my  own  case  I 
doubt  if  it  would  give  me  the  same  warm, 


72  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

pervading  glow   of   satisfaction  that    obtain 
from  a  more  Narcissari  procedure. 

By  the  way,  ought  one  to  say  "  self-esti- 
mate" or  "self-esteem"?  What  a  silly 
girl  I  am  !  I  quite  forgot. 


SEVENTH  EXTRACT 

SELF-ESTIMATE 

MORE  trouble.  Determined  to  give  an  esti- 
mate of  myself  based  on  the  best  models,  I 
turned  to  the  pages  of  my  Great  Example, 
and  ran  into  the  following  sentence  : 

"  I  do  not  propose  to  treat  myself  like  Mr. 
Bernard  Shaw  in  this  account." 

Does  this  mean  that  she  does  not  propose 
to  treat  herself  as  if  she  were  Mr.  Bernard 
Shaw  ?  It  might.  Does  it  mean  that  she 
does  not  propose  to  treat  herself  as  Mr.  Ber- 
nard Shaw  treats  her  ?  It  is  not  impossible. 

What  one  wants  it  to  mean  is  :  "I  do  not 
propose  to  treat  myself  as  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
treats  himself."  But  if  she  had  meant  that, 
she  would  have  said  it. 

I  backed  away  cautiously,  and,  a  few  lines 
further  on,  fell  over  her  statement  that  she 
has  a  conception  of  beauty  "  not  merely  in 
poetry,  music,  art  and  nature,  but  in  human 
beings."  No  doubt.  And  I  have  a  concep- 
tion of  slovenly  writing  not  merely  in  her 
autobiography,  but  in  its  seventeenth  chapter. 

I  had  not  gone  very  much  further  in  that 
same  chapter  before  I  was  caught  in  the 
following  thicket : 

"  I  have  got  china,  books,  whips,  knives, 
matchboxes,  and  clocks  given  me  since  I  was 
a  small  child." 

73 


74,  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

If  these  things  were  given  her  since  she  was 
a  small  child,  they  might  have  been  given  her 
on  the  day  she  wrote — in  which  case  it  would 
not  have  leen  remarkable  that  she  still 
possessed  them.  The  nearest  way  out  of  the 
jungle  would  be  to  substitute  "  when  "  for 
"  since."  But  it  is  incredible  that  she  should 
have  thought  of  two  ways  of  saying  the  same 
thing,  let  them  run  into  one  another,  and 
sent  "  The  Sunday  Times  "  the  mess  resulting 
from  the  collision. 

She  must  be  right.  Mr.  Balfour  said  she 
was  the  best  letter-writer  he  knew.  With 
generous  reciprocity  she  read  Mr.  Balfour's 
books  and  realized  without  external  help 
"  what  a  beautiful  style  he  wrote." 

And  for  goodness  sake  don't  ask  me  how 
you  write  a  style.  You  do  it  in  precisely  the 
same  way  that  you  cook  a  saucepan — that  is, 
by  the  omission  of  the  word  "in." 

Yet  one  more  quotation  from  the  last 
column  of  the  last  extract : 

"If  I  had  to  confess  and  expose  one 
opinion  of  myself  which  might  differentiate 
me  a  little  from  other  people,  I  should  say  it 
was  my  power  of  love  coupled  with  my  power 
of  criticism." 

No,  never  mind.  The  power  of  love  is 
not  an  opinion  ;  and  in  ending  a  sentence  it 
is  just  as  well  to  remember  how  you  began  it. 
But  I  absolutely  refuse  to  let  my  simple  faith 
be  shaken.  She  records  the  bones  that  she 
has  broken,  but  John  Addington  Symonds 
told  her  that  she  retained  "  Voreille  juste" 


SELF-ESTIMATE  75 

Her  husband  said  she  wrote  well,  and  he 
must  know.  Besides,  am  I  to  be  convinced 
in  my  penultimate  chapter  that  anything 
can  be  wrong  with  the  model  I  have  followed  ? 
Certainly  not.  It  would  be  heartbreaking. 

Besides,  the  explanation  is  quite  simple. 
When  she  wrote  that  last  instalment  in  "  The 
Sunday  Times,"  the  power  of  criticism  had 
gone  to  have  the  valves  ground  in. 

I  will  now  ask  your  kind  attention  for  my 
estimate  of  me,  Marge  Askinforit,  by  myself. 

There  is  just  one  quality  which  I  claim  to 
have  in  an  even  greater  degree  than  my  proto- 
type. She  is  unlike  real  life — no  woman 
was  ever  like  what  any  woman  supposes  her- 
self to  be — but  I  am  far  more  unlike  real  life. 
I  have  more  inconsistency,  more  self-contra- 
diction, more  anachronism,  more  impossibility. 
In  fact,  I  sometimes  feel  as  if  some  fool  of  a 
man  were  just  making  me  up  as  he  went 
along. 

And  the  next  article  ?  Yes,  my  imagina- 
tion. 

I  have  imagination  of  a  certain  kind.  It 
has  nothing  to  do  with  invention  or  fancy. 
It  is  not  a  mental  faculty  at  all.  It  is  not 
physical.  Neither  is  it  paralysis,  butter- 
scotch, or  three  spades  re-doubled.  I  should 
so  much  like  to  give  some  idea  of  it  if  I  had 
any.  Perhaps  an  instance  will  help. 

I  remember  that  I  once  said  to  the  Dean  of 
Belial  that  I  thought  the  naming  of  a  High- 


7C  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

land  hotel  "The  Light  Brigade"  showed  a 
high  degree  of  imagination. 

"  Half  a  moment,"  said  the  Dean.  "  I 
think  I  know  that  one.  No — can't  get  it. 
Why  was  the  hotel  called  that  ?  " 

**  Because  of  its  terrific  charges." 

"  Yes,"  he  said  wearily.  "  I've  heard  it. 
But  " — more  brightly — "  can  you  tell  me  why 
a  Highland  regiment  was  called  '  The  Black 
Watch '  ?  " 

"  I  can,  Massa  Johnson.  Because  there's 
a  l  b  '  in  both." 

"  Wrong  again.  It's  because  there's  an 
4  e  '  in  each." 

I  gave  him  a  half-nelson  to  the  jaw  and 
killed  him,  and  the  entire  company  then  sung 
"  Way  down  upon  de  Swannee  Ribber,"  with 
harmonium  accompaniment,  thus  bringing  the 
afternoon  performance  to  a  close.  The  front 
seats  were  half  empty,  but  then  it  was  late 
in  the  season,  and  looked  like  rain,  and — 

Certainly,  I  can  stop  if  you  like.  But 
you  do  see  what  I  mean,  don't  you  ?  The 
imagination  is  something  that  runs  away 
with  you.  If  I  were  to  let  mine  get  away 
with  me,  it  would  knock  this  old  autobiography 
all  to  splinters. 

But  I  do  not  appear  to  have  the  kind  of 
imagination  that  makes  me  know  what  will 
hurt  people's  feelings.  If  I  love  people  I 
always  tell  them  what  their  worst  faults  are, 
and  repeat  what  everybody  says  about  them 
behind  their  back.  That  ought  to  make 
people  say :  "  Thank  you,  Marge,  for  your 


SELF-ESTIMATE  77 

kind  words.  They  will  help  me  to  improve 
myself."  It  has  not  happened  yet.  It  is 
my  miraculous  power  of  criticism  that  causes 
the  trouble.  Whenever  I  let  it  off  the  lead  it 
seems  to  bite  somebody ;  a  muzzle  has  been 
suggested. 

The  other  day  I  said  to  Popsie  Bantam  : 
"  You're  quite  right  to  bob  your  hair,  Popsie. 
When  you  have  not  got  enough  of  anything, 
always  try  to  persuade  people  that  you  want 
less.  But  your  rouge-et-noir  make-up  is 
right  off  the  map.  If  you  could  manage  to 
get  some  of  the  colours  in  som*  of  the  right 
places,  people  would  laugh  less.  And  I  can 
never  quite  decide  whether  it's  your  clothes 
that  are  all  wrong,  or  if  it's  just  your  figure. 
I  wish  you'd  tell  me.  Anyhow,  you  should 
try  for  a  job  at  a  photographer's — you're  just 
the  girl  for  a  dark-room." 

Really,  that's  all  I  said — just  affectionate, 
lambent,  helpful  criticism,  with  a  little  Tarra- 
gon in  it.  Yet  next  day  when  I  met  her  on 
the  staircase  she  said  she  didn't  want  to  talk 
to  me  any  more.  So  I  heaved  her  over  the 
balustrade  and  she  had  a  forty-foot  drop  on 
to  the  marble  below.  I  am  too  impulsive — 
I  have  always  said  so.  Rather  a  pathetic 
touch  was  that  she  died  just  as  the  ambulance 
reached  the  hospital.  I  have  lost  quite  a  lot 
of  nice  friends  in  this  way. 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  teeny-weeny 
murders,  I  do  not  think  I  have  done  anything 
in  my  life  that  I  regret.  And  even  the 
murders — such  as  they  were — were  more  th« 


TS  MARGE    ASK3NFORIT 

fault  of  my  circumstances  than  of  myself. 
If,  as  I  have  always  wished,  I  had  lived  alone 
on  a  desert  island,  I  should  never  have  killed 
anybody  at  all.  But  when  you  go  into  the 
great  world  (basement  entrance)  and  have  a 
bad  night,  or  the  flies  are  troublesome,  you 
do  get  a  feeling  of  passionate  economy  ;  you 
realize  that  there  are  people  you  can  do 
without,  and  you  do  without  them.  This  is 
the  whole  truth  about  a  little  failing  of  which 
my  detractors  have  made  the  most.  Calumny 
and  exaggeration  have  been  carried  to  such 
an  extent  that  more  than  once  I  have  been 
accused  of  being  habitually  irritable. 

My  revered  model  wrote  that  she  had 
always  been  a  collector  "  of  letters,  old 
photographs  of  the  family,  famous  people  and 
odds  and  ends."  I  have  not  gone  quite  as 
far  as  this. 

I  have  collected  odds,  and  almost  every 
autumn  I  roam  over  the  moors  and  fill  a 
large  basket  with  them,  but  I  have  never 
collected  ends. 

I  do  want  to  collect  famous  people,  but  for 
want  of  a  little  education  I  have  not  been 
able  to  do  it.  I  simply  do  not  know  whether 
it  is  best  to  keep  them  in  spirits  of  wine,  or 
to  have  them  stuffed  in  glass  cases — like  the 
canaries  and  the  fish  that  you  could  not 
otherwise  believe  in.  I  have  been  told  that 
really  the  best  way  is  to  press  them  between 
the  leaves  of  some  very  heavy  book,  such  as 
an  autobiography,  but  I  fancy  they  lose  much  of 
their  natural  brilliance  when  treated  in  this  way. 


SELF-ESTIMATE  79 

Another  difficulty  is  that  the  ordinary 
cyani  "e  bottles  that  you  buy  at  the  naturalist's, 
though  excellent  for  moths,  are  not  really 
large  enough  to  hold  a  full-sized  celebrity. 
At  the  risk  of  being  called  a  sentimentalist,  I 
may  say  that  I  do  not  think  I  could  kill 
famous  people  by  any  method  that  was  not 
both  quick  and  painless.  If  anything  like 
cruelty  were  involved  in  their  destruction,  I 
would  sooner  not  collect  them  at  all,  but  just 
make  a  study  of  them  in  their  wild  state. 

I  am  only  a  poor  little  girl,  and  I  can  find 
nothing  whatever  on  the  subject  in  any  refer- 
ence book  in  the  public  reading-room.  I  need 
expert  advice.  There  is  quite  a  nice  collection 
of  famous — and  infamous — people  near  Baker 
Street  Station,  but  I  am  told  these  are  only 
simulacra.  That  would  not  suit  me  at  all. 
I  am  far  too  genuine,  downright,  and  truth- 
ful to  put  up  with  anything  less  than  the 
real  thing. 

There  must  be  some  way  of  doing  it.  I 
should  like  to  have  a  stuffed  M.P.  in  a  glass 
case  at  each  end  of  the  mantelpiece  in  my 
little  boudoir.  They  need  not  be  of  the 
rarest  and  most  expensive  kinds.  A  pretty 
Labour  Member  with  his  mouth  open  and  a 
rustic  background,  and  a  Coalitionist  lightly 
poised  on  the  fence,  would  please  me. 

It  would  be  so  interesting  to  display  one's 
treasures  when  people  came  to  tea. 

"  Never  seen  a  real  leader-writer  ?  "  I 
should  say.  "  They're  plentiful  locally,  but 
mostly  come  out  at  nioht.  and  so  many  people 


80  MARGB    ASKINFORIT 

miss  them.  It  is  not  of  the  least  use  to  put 
treacle  on  the  trees.  The  best  way  is  to 
drive  a  taxi  slowly  down  Fleet  Street  about 
one  in  the  morning  and  look  honest.  That's 
how  I  got  the  big  leader-writer  in  the  hall. 
Just  press  his  top  waistcoat  button  and  he'll 
prove  that  the  lost  election  was  a  moral 
victory. 

"  In  the  next  case  ?  Oh,  they're  just  a 
couple  of  little  Georgian  poets.  They  look 
wild,  but  they're  quite  tame  really.  Sprinkle 
an  advance  on  account  of  royalties  on  the 
window-sill  and  they'll  come  for  it.  It  used 
to  be  pretty  to  watch  those  two,  pouring 
adulatory  articles  over  each  other.  They 
sing  chopped  prose,  and  it  seemed  almost  a 
pity  to  kill  them ;  but  there  are  plenty  more. 

"  And  that  very  pretty  creature  is  an 
actress  ;  if  you  drop  an  interviewer  into  the 
left  hand  corner  of  the  dressing-room  you  will 
hear  her  say  :  '  I  love  a  country  life,  and  am 
never  happier  than  when  I  am  working  in 
my  little  garden,' — insert  here  the  photo- 
graph in  the  sun-bonnet — '  I  don't  think  the 
great  public  often  realizes  what  a  vast  amount 
of '  " 

But  I  am  talking  about  collecting  other 
people.  I  am  wandering  from  my  subject. 
I  must  collect  myself. 

At  a  very  early  age  I  caught  the  measles 
and  a  little  later  on  the  public  eye.  The 
latter  I  still  hold.  But  I  do  not  often  lose 
anything  except  friends,  and  occasionally  the 
last  'bus,  and  of  course  my  situations.  My 


SELF-ESTIMATE  81 

graat  model  says  it  is  a  positive  punishment  to 
her  to  be  in  one  position  for  long  at  a  time, 
and  I  must  be  something  like  that — I  rarely 
keep  a  place  much  longer  than  a  month.  On 
the  other  hand,  I  still  have  quite  a  number  of 
metal  discs  that  formed  the  wheels  of  a  toy 
railway  train  which  I  had  when  I  was  quite  a 
child.  I  should  have  had  them  all,  but  I 
used  some  to  get  chocolates  out  of  the  auto- 
matic machines. 

I  should  have  liked  to  have  appended  here 
a  list  of  my  accomplishments,  but  I  must 
positively  keep  room  for  my  last  chapter.  So 
to  save  space  I  will  merely  give  a  list  of  the 
accomplishments  which  I  have  not  got,  or 
have  not  got  to  perfection. 

The  E  flat  clarionet  is  not  really  my  instru- 
ment, but  I  will  give  you  three  guesses  what 
is. 

I  skate  beautifully,  but  not  so  well  as  I 
dance.  However,  I  am  saving  the  I's  out  of 
my  autobiography  for  further  practice. 

Some  people  perhaps  have  better  memories. 
But  that's  no  reason  why  they  should  write 
to  the  "  Sunday  Times  "  about  it. 

I  cannot  write  Chinese  as  fluently  as  Eng- 
lish, though  I  might  conceivably  write  it  more 
correctly. 

I  think  I  have  mentioned  everything  in 
which  I  am  not  perfectly  accomplished.  Truth 
and  modesty  make  me  do  it. 

I  would  conclude  this  estimate  of  myself 
as  follows.  If  I  had  to  confess  and  expose  one 
opinion  of  myself  which  would  record  what  I 


82  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

believe  to  be  my  differentiation  from  other 
people,  it  would  be  the  opinion  that  I  am  a 
law  unto  myself  and  a  judgment  to  everybody 
else. 


LATE  EXTRA 

TRAGIC  DISAPPEARANCE  OF  MARGE 
ASKINFORIT 

I  SOMETIMES  think  that  it  must  have  been 
a  sense  of  impending  autobiography  which 
made  me  seek  employment  in  the  Lightning 
Laundry.  After  all,  the  autobiographist 
merely  does  in  public  what  the  laundry  does 
in  the  decent  seclusion  of  its  works  at  Wands- 
•  worth  or  Balham. 

The  principal  difference  would  appear  to 
be  that  a  respectable  laundress  does  know 
where  to  draw  the  line. 

But  I  admit  that  I  had  other  motives  in 
seeking  a  new  career.  My  attempt  to  reclaim 
baronets  in  their  dinner-hour  had  broken 
down  completely ;  in  spite  of  everything  I 
could  do,  the  dirty  dogs  would  persist  in 
eating  their  dinner  at  that  time.  Then  again, 
the  beautiful  and  imaginative  essays  which 
dear  Casey  wrote,  under  different  names  and 
with  varying  addresses,  on  my  suitability  for 
domestic  service,  had  begun  to  attract  too 
much  attention ;  and  a  censorious  world 
stigmatized  as  false  and  dishonest  what  was 
really  poetical.  I  wanted  too,  a  position  of 
greater  independence. 

Of  course,  I  had  to  learn  the  work.  At 
first  I  was  taught  the  leading  principles  of 

83 


84 

button-removal.  Then  I  went  on  to  the 
rough-edging.  This  consists  hi  putting  a 
rough  edge  on  starched  collars  and  cuffs  with 
a  coarse  file.  Afterwards  I  was  promoted  to 
the  mixing  department.  This  is  where  the 
completed  articles  are  packed  for  delivery. 
It  requires  great  quickness  and  a  nice  sense  of 
humour.  For  instance,  you  take  up  a  pair 
of  socks  and  have  to  decide  instantly  whether 
you  will  send  them  both  to  an  elderly  un- 
married lady,  or  divide  them  impartially  be- 
tween two  men.  Our  skill  hi  creating  odd 
socks  and  stockings  was  gratefully  recognized 
by  the  Amalgamated  Hosiers'  Institution,  who 
paid  the  laundry  an  annual  subsidy.  A  good 
memory  was  essential  for  the  work.  Every 
girl  was  required  to  memorize  what  size  in 
collars  each  male  client  took,  so  that  the 
fifteen-inch  collars  might  be  sent  to  the  man 
with  the  seventeen-inch  neck  and  vice-versa. 
As  the  manager  said  to  me  once  :  "  What  we 
are  here  for  is  to  teach  people  self-control. 
The  rest  is  merely  incidental." 

I  did  not  remain  very  long  in  the  mixing 
department.  My  head  for  figures  soon  earned 
me  a  place  in  the  office.  Much  of  it  was 
routine  work.  Four  times  every  year  we 
had  to  send  out  the  notices  that  owing  to  the 
increased  cost  of  labour  and  materials  we  were 
reluctantly  compelled  to  increase  our  prices 
22£  per  cent.  We  made  it  22£  per  cent.'  with 
the  happy  certainty  that  very  few  of  our 
customers  would  be  able  to  calculate  the 
amount  of  the  increase,  and  still  fewer  would 


LATE    EXTRA  85 

take  the  trouble ;  this  left  a  little  room  for 
the  play  of  our  fancy.  As  one  of  our  direc- 
tors— a  man  with  a  fine,  scholarly  head — once 
said  to  me  :  "  Bring  the  larger  vision  into  the 
addition  of  a  customer's  account.  The  only 
natural  limit  to  the  charge  for  washing  a 
garment  is  the  cost  of  the  garment.  Keep 
your  eyes  ever  on  the  goal.  Our  present  prices 
are  but  milestones  on  the  road."  He  had  a 
beautiful,  ecclesiastical  voice.  Nobody  would 
have  guessed  that  he  was  an  engineer  and  the 
inventor  of  the  Button-pulper  and  Hem- 
render  which  have  done  so  much  to  make  our 
laundries  what  they  are. 

From  the  very  first  day  that  I  took  up  my 
work  in  the  office  I  became  conscious  that 
Hector,  the  manager,  had  his  eye  upon  me. 
He  would  generally  read  a  page  or  two  of 
Keats  or  Shelley  to  us  girls,  before  we  began 
to  make  out  the  customers'  accounts.  This 
was  all  in  accord  with  the  far-seeing  and 
generous  policy  of  the  laundry.  The  reading 
took  a  little  time,  but  it  filled  us  with 
the  soaring  spirit.  It  made  pedantic 
precision  and  things-that-are  repulsive  to  us. 
After  I  heard  Hector  read  the  "  Ode  to  a 
Nightingale "  I  could  not  bring  myself  to 
say  that  two  and  two  were  four  ;  nothing  less 
than  fourteen  seemed  to  give  me  any  satis- 
faction. Hector  knew  how  quickly  respon- 
sive and  keenly  sentient  I  was.  A  friend  once 
told  me  that  he  had  said  of  me  that  I  made 
arithmetic  a  rhapsody.  "  This,"  I  replied 
quietly,  "  means  business." 


86  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

It  did.  One  Saturday  afternoon  I  had  tea 
with  him — not  on  the  Terrace,  as  the  A.B.C. 
shop  in  the  High  Street  was  so  much  nearer. 
He  was  very  wonderful.  He  talked  con- 
tinuously for  two  hours,  and  would  have 
gone  on  longer.  But  the  waitress  pointed  out 
that  the  charge  for  a  cup  of  tea  and  a  scone 
did  not  include  a  twenty-one  years'  lease  of 
the  chair  you  sat  on. 

He  was,  of  course,  a  man  of  great  scientific 
attainments.  His  work  on  the  use  of  acids 
in  fabric-disintegration  has  a  reputation 
throughout  the  laundries  of  Europe.  But  he 
had  not  the  habit  of  screaming  blasphemies 
which  my  Great  Example  failed  to  convince 
anybody  that  she  had  discovered  in  Huxley. 
In  brief,  he  did  not  conform  to  the  unscientific 
idea  of  what  a  scientific  man  must  be  like. 
He  was  a  cultured  idealist.  I  will  try  to  recall 
a  few  of  the  marvellous  things  he  said  that 
afternoon. 

In  reply  to  some  remark  of  mine,  he  said 
with  authority  and  conviction  :  "  Marge,  you 
really  are." 

And,  indeed,  I  had  to  admit  that  very  often 
I  am. 

He  was  saying  that  in  this  world  gentle 
methods  have  effected  more  than  harsh,  and 
added  this  beautiful  thought :  "  In  the  ordeal 
by  laundry  the  soft-fronted  often  outlasts 
the  starched." 

Later,  I  led  him  on  to  speak  of  ambition. 

"  I  am  ambitious.  That  is  to  say,  I  live 
not  in  the  present,  but  in  the  future.  At  one 


LATE    EXTRA  87 

time  I  had  a  bicycle,  but  in  imagination  I 
drove  a  second-hand  Ford  ;  and  now  I  possess 
the  Ford,  and  in  imagination  I  have  a  Rolls- 
Royce.  I  once  held  a  subordinate  position 
in  the  laundry,  but  in  imagination  I  was  the 
manager  ;  and  now  I  am  the  manager,  and  in 
imagination  am  asked  to  join  the  Board  of 
Directors.  As  the  poet  Longfellow  so  wisely 
said — Excelsior.  Engraved  in  letters  of  gold 
on  the  heart  of  the  ambitious  are  these  words  : 
'  And  the  next  article  ?  '  At  this  present 
moment  I  am  having  a  cup  of  tea  with  by  far 
the  most  brilliant  and  beautiful  girl  of  my 
acquaintance,  but  in  imagination " 

And  it  was  just  there  that  the  tactless 
waitress  interrupted  us  so  rudely.  It  was  in 
vain  that  I  tried  to  lead  him  back  to  the 
subject.  Almost  his  last  words  to  me  that 
afternoon  were  : 

"  I  suppose  you  don't  happen  to  know 
what  the  time  is  ?  " 

Nor  did  I.  It  was  just  an  instance  of  his 
subtle  intuition.  He  understood  me  at  once 
and  without  effort.  Many  men  have  made 
a  hobby  of  it  for  years  and  never  been  within 
three  streets  of  it. 

The  clock  at  the  post-office  gave  him  the 
information  he  required,  and,  raising  his  hat, 
he  said  :  "  Well,  I  must  be  getting  on." 

The  whole  of  the  man's  life  was  in  that 
sentence.  Always,  he  was  getting  on — and 
always  with  a  compulsion,  as  of  destiny, 
shoving  behind. 

Knowing  my  keen  appreciation  of  art,  of 


88  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

which  I  have  always  been  a  just  and  unfailing 
critic,  he  took  me  on  the  following  Saturday 
to  see  the  pictures.  It  was  not  a  good  show — 
too  many  comics  for  my  taste,  and  I'd  seen 
the  Charlie  Chaplin  one  before.  However, 
hi  the  dim  seclusion  of  the  two-shilling  seats 
just  as  the  eighteenth  episode  of  "  The 
Woman  Vampire  "  reached  its  most  pathetic 
passage,  and  the  girl  at  the  piano  appropriately 
shifted  to  the  harmonium,  Hector  asked  me 
if  I  would  marry  him. 

(No,  I  shan't.  I  know  I'm  an  autobio- 
grapher  and  that  you  have  paid  to  come  in, 
but  there  are  limits.  You  know  how  shy  and 
retiring  I  am.  No  nice  girl  would  tell  you 
what  the  man  said  or  did  on  such  an  occasion, 
or  how  she  responded.  There  will  be  no 
details.  And  you  ought  to  be  ashamed  of 
yourself.) 

But  just  one  of  Hector's  observations  struck 
me  particularly  :  "  You  know,  Marge,  there 
are  not  many  girls  in  the  laundry  I  would 
say  as  much  to." 

That  statement  of  preference,  admitting  me 
as  it  were  to  a  small  circle  of  the  elect,  meant 
very  much  to  me.  I  could  only  reply  that 
there  were  some  men  I  wouldn't  even  allow 
to  take  me  to  a  cinema.  I  asked,  and  was 
accorded,  time  for  consideration. 

I  was  face  to  face  with  the  greatest  problem 
of  my  life.  There  was,  I  know,  one  great 
drawback  to  my  marriage  with  Hector.  An 
Immense  risk  was  involved.  When  the  end 


LATE    EXTRA  89 

of  this  chapter  is  reached  the  reader  will  know 
what  the  risk  and  drawback  were. 

At  the  same  time,  everybody  knew  well 
that  Hector  was  marked  out  for  a  great 
position.  I  had  already,  with  a  view  to 
eventualities,  had  some  discussion  with  one 
of  the  Directors,  Mr.  Cashmere,  whom  I 
have  already  quoted.  I  was  a  special  favourite 
of  his.  But  it  is  quite  an  ordinary  thing  in 
business,  of  course,  for  a  Director  to  discuss 
the  internal  affairs  of  the  Board  with  one  of 
the  Company's  junior  clerks. 

Mr.  Cashmere  expressed  the  highest  opinion 
of  Hector,  and  said  he  had  no  doubt  that 
Hector  would  become  a  Director,  as  a  result 
of  a  complicated  situation  that  had  arisen. 
Two  of  the  Directors,  Mr.  Serge  and  Mr. 
Angora,  while  remaining  on  the  best  possible 
social  terms  with  the  chairman,  Sir  Charles 
Cheviot,  were  bitterly  opposed  to  him  on 
questions  of  policy.  On  the  other  olid, 
though  agreed  on  questions  of  policy,  Mr.  Serge 
and  Mr.  Angora  were  bitterly  jealous  of  each 
other,  and  a  rupture  was  imminent.  Under 
the  circumstances,  Mr.  Cashmere,  while  assur- 
ing everybody  of  his  whole-hearted  support, 
had  a  private  reservation  of  judgment  to  be 
finally  settled  by  the  directional  feline  saltation 

Whichever  turn  the  crisis  took,  he 
regarded  it  as  certain  that  there  would  be 
a  resignation,  and  that  Hector  would  get  the 
vacant  place. 

"Why,"  I  said,  "it's  rather  like  the 
Government  of  the  British  Empire.** 


90  MARGE    ASKINFORIT 

"  Hush  !  "  he  said,  warningly.  "  It  is 
exactly  like  it,  but  in  the  interests  of  the 
shareholders  we  do  not  wish  that  to  be 
generally  known.  It  would  destroy  confi- 
dence." 

I  myself  felt  quite  certain  that  if  Hector 
did  become  a  Director  he  would  very  shortly 
be  chairman  of  the  Board.  He  was  a  man 
that  naturally  took  anything  there  was. 

It  was  in  my  power  to  marry  a  man  who 
would  become  the  chairman  of  a  Laundry 
Company  with  seventeen  different  branches. 
It  was  a  great  position.  Had  I  any  right  to 
refuse  it  ?  If  I  did  not  take  it,  I  felt  sure 
that  somebody  else  would.  Was  anybody 
else  as  good  as  I  was  ?  Truth  compelled  me 
to  answer  in  the  negative.  The  voice  of  con- 
science said  :  "  Take  a  good  thing  when  you 
see  it.  People  have  lost  fortunes  by  opening 
their  mouths  too  wide." 

On  the  other  hand  there  were  two  considera- 
tions of  importance.  I  might  possibly  receive 
a  better  offer.  If  I  had  been  quite  sure  that 
Hector  would  have  taken  it  nicely,  I  would 
have  asked  him  for  a  three  months'  option  to 
see  if  anything  better  turned  up,  but  I  knew 
that  with  his  sensitive  nature  he  might  be 
offended. 

The  second  consideration  was  the  terrible 
risk  to  which  I  have  already  referred.  Do  be 
patient.  You  will  know  all  about  it  when 
the  time  comes. 

I  had  to  decide  one  way  or  the  other,  and — 
as  the  world  knows  now — I  decided  in  favour 


LATE    EXTRA  §1 

of  Hector.     And  immediately  the  storm  broke. 

Every  old  cat  that  I  knew — and  I  knew 
some — began  to  give  me  advice.  Now,  no- 
body takes  advice  better  than  I  do,  when  I 
am  conscious  that  I  need  it  and  am  sure  that 
the  advice  is  good.  Of  this  I  feel  as  sure  as 
if  such  an  occasion  had  ever  actually  arrived. 
In  an  International  Sweet-nature  Competition 
I  would  back  myself  for  money  every  time. 

I  was  told  that  in  the  dignified  position 
which  was  to  be  mine  I  must  give  up  larking 
about  and  the  use  of  wicked  words  when 
"irritated.  It  seemed  to  me  that  if  I  was  to 
surrender  all  my  accomplishments  I  might 
just  as  well  never  marry  Hector  at  all.  I  avoid 
a  certain  freedom  of  speech  which  my  great 
predecessor  uses  on  a  similar  occasion. 

Dear  old  Mr.  Cashmere  found  me  in  almost 
a  bad  temper  about  it,  and  listened  gravely 
to  my  complaint.  Placing  one  hand  on  my 
shoulder,  he  said  : 

"Marge,  I  have  lived  long,  and  in  the  course 
of  my  life  I  have  received  much  advice.  My 
invariable  rule  has  always  been  to  thank 
for  it,  expressing  my  gratitude  with  some 
warmth  and  every  appearance  of  sincerity. 
This  is  all  that  the  adviser  requires.  It  gives 
him,  or  her,  complete  satisfaction.  It  costs 
nothing.  Afterwards,  I  proceed  precisely  as 
if -no  advice  had  been  given." 

That  freak,  Millie  Wyandotte,  sent  me  a 
plated  toast-rack  and  a  letter  from  which  I 
extract  the  following : 

"  If  you  were  half  as  extraordinary  as  you 


&2  MABGE    ASKTSTORIT 

•think  yon  are,  this  would  be  a  miserable 
marriage.  Anybody  who  married  it  would 
get  lost,  bewildered,  and  annoyed,  and  the 
hymn  for  those  at  sea  should  be  sung  at  the 
wedding  ceremony.  But  cheer  up,  old  girL 
Really  extraordinary  people  never  think  it 
worth  while  to  prove  that  they  are  extra- 
ordinary, and  mostly  would  resent  being  told 
it.  You'll  do.  Psychologies  like  yours  can 
be  had  from  any  respectable  dealer  at  a 
shilling  a  dozen,  Jnrfudhig  the  box.  They 
wear  very  wefl  and  give  satisfaction.  Here's 
tack." 

Mr.  J.  A.  Banting  sent  me  a  travelling-clock 
at  one  time  the  property  of  Lord  Baringstoke, 
and  a  letter  of  such  fervent  piety  and  tender 
affection  that  it  is  too  sacred  for  me  to  quote. 

Fifty-eight  rejected  suitors  *«mhiiw»rl  to 
send  me  a  hand-bag  of  no  great  intrinsic 
value.  I  cannot  but  think  that  the  principle 
of  syndication  is  more  suited  to  business  than 
to  generosity. 

But  I  will  not  weary  the  reader  with  a  list 
of  the  numerous  and  costly  gifts  that  I  re- 
ceived. Suffice  it  to  say  that  one  of  my 
brothers,  an  crrdlmt  judge,  offered  me  a  fiver 
for  the  lot,  and  said  that  he  expected  to  lose 
money  by  it. 


itdy  after  the  wedding 


the  blow  fcfl.    I  had  foreseen  the  danger  of 
om  the  very  first,  and  that  disaster 


LATE    EXTRA  98 

came.  I  can  hardly  bring  myself  to  write 
of  it. 

I  have  spoken  of  my  husband  as  Hector, 
but  his  surname  was  Harris — his  mother  was 
one  of  the  Tweeds.  Consequently,  I  had 
become  Mrs.  Harris. 

The  tendency  of  a  Mrs.  Harris  to  become 
mythical  was  first  noticed  by  an  English 
writer  of  some  repute  in  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury. I  forget  his  precise  name,  but  believe 
that  it  was  Thackeray. 

It  was  in  the  vestry  that  I  seemed  to  hear 
the  voice  of  an  elderly  and  gin-bemused 
female  telling  me  that  there  was  no  sich 
person.  I  did  not  cease  to  exist,  but  I  became 
aware  that  I  never  had,  and  never  could  have, 
existed.  I  was  merely  mythical.  Gently 
whispering  "  The  Snark  was  a  Boojum,"  I 
faded  away. 

The  last  sound  I  heard  was  the  voice  of 
Hector  calling  to  me  : 

"  Hullo,  hullo  !  Are  you  there  ?  Harris 
speaking  ....  Hullo,  hullo  .... 
Are  you  there  ?  " 

And,  as  not  infrequently  happens,  there 
was  no  answer, 


i  >!.'.tt' ' 


A     000108831     9 


H.  G.  WELLS' 

Best  Novels 
TONO  BUNGAY 

(llth    Edition) 

THE  NEW  MACHIAVELLI 

(10th    Edition) 

MARRIAGE 

(12th    Edition) 

MR.  POLLY 

(9th    Edition) 

THE 

ISLAND  OF  DR.  MOREAU 

(10th    Edition) 

DUFFEIDE3COMBW 


